Buying beauty

Alcan has sold its aluminium tubes business to its current management team and 21 Centrale Partners, an investment fund specialising in high-potential mid-size industrial companies. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.

The sale consists of three plants located in Saumur (France), Kolin (Czech Republic) and Cividate al Piano (Italy). The aluminium tubes business’ 780 employees will continue to work for the new entity, which has annual sales of approximately $85 million.

"Alcan’s strategy is to further direct our investments on markets with better growth rates, such as our other tube businesses – plastic and laminate – which remain a core operation within Alcan Packaging’s Beauty Sector," said Christel Bories, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alcan Packaging.

To bolster its beauty business further, the company also announced that it had purchased a packaging manufacturing site in the Chinese Suzhou region to produce plastic and aluminium packaging for make-up and skincare such as mascaras, lipsticks, compacts, cream jars and dispensers.

The plant is located on a 100,000 m2 site which could be further developed in the future. Production will begin in the third quarter of 2005.