Japan's Hokuetsu Kishu to Buy Canadian Alpac for $50+ Million
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Japan's Hokuetsu Kishu Paper, Chūō, Japan, (HKP) announced this past week plans to acquire leading Canadian pulp producer Alpac Forest Products (Alberta, Canada), taking its first step into North America as demand at home continues to shrink.
HKP, the fifth-largest papermaker in Japan, will purchase all of Alpac's shares from Mitsubishi Corp. and Oji Holdings, which have roughly 80% and 20% stakes in the Canadian company, as early as this spring. The value of the entire deal is expected to top 6 billion yen ($50 million).
Alpac, which began operating in 1993, produces about 650,000 metric tpy of high-quality pulp from wood collected over roughly 5.8 million hectares of forest. It mainly supplies papermakers in North America and Asia, and rakes in about 40 billion yen in annual sales.
Overseas sales would account for more than 20% of Hokuetsu Kishu's total after the acquisition, compared with the current figure of about 10%.
HKP has been expanding overseas operations lately. It brought fully online a factory for white paperboard, usually used for boxes, in China's Guangdong Province this January. It aims to bring in 300 billion yen in sales by 2020.
Other Japanese papermakers are expanding abroad as well. Oji Holdings purchased the pulp, paper, and cardboard business of a leading company in New Zealand last year.
