Sonoco Completes Acquisition of Conitex Sonoco Joint Venture

Sonoco (Hartsville, S.C., USA), announced on Monday (Oct. 1, 2018) it has completed the acquisition of the remaining 70% interest in the joint venture of Conitex Sonoco, a vertically integrated global leader in the manufacture of paper-based cones and tubes used in the textile industry.

The Conitex Sonoco joint venture was formed in 1998 between Texpack, Inc., a Spanish-based global provider of paper-based packaging products, and Sonoco’s former North America textile cone business. Sonoco acquired the remaining 70% interest from Texpack, along with a composite can plant in Spain for $143 million in cash. In 2017, the joint venture produced total sales of approximately $245 million and produced more than 300,000 short tons of uncoated recycled paperboard, which was used to produce approximately 1.4 billion tubes and cones for the global spun yarn industry. The joint venture has approximately 1,250 employees and 13 manufacturing locations in 10 countries, including four paper mills and seven cone and tube converting operations and two other production facilities.

"The Conitex Sonoco relationship has been very successful over the past 20 years, and we see even further opportunity to grow Sonoco’s existing global paper-based tube and core business through this combination, especially in faster-growing emerging markets in Asia where we will be substantially increasing our manufacturing presence while more than doubling our current annual sales in the region," said Rob Tiede, Sonoco president and CEO.

Conitex Sonoco’s COO Michel Schmidlin and members of his global leadership team will remain with Sonoco, and there are no expected changes to customer relationships. Conitex Sonoco’s financial results will be reported within Sonoco’s Paper/Industrial Converted Products segment and the Spanish composite can operations reported in the Company’s Consumer Packaging segment.