Peter Brues, president of Amcor Flexibles Europe & Americas, told FoodProductionDaily.com that as the largest single contributor to Amcor’s €9.5bn (A$14bn) annual sales, flexible packaging looks set to play a major role in the future of the packing giant.
The company finally completed its US$1.948bn acquisition of Alcan Packaging at the beginning of February. It announced sealing the deal had made it the flexible packaging global leader in its strategic growth markets. Amcor’s global footprint now reaches 300 sites in 42 countries, while the US and European flexible division boasts 70 plants across 23 countries - serving a wide range of food markets, including fresh and dairy, processed products as well as snacks and confectionery.
Brues has been on a European tour of the company’s operations over the past three months and was last week speaking at Amcor’s newly acquired aluminium rolling plant in the German town of Singen as part of an event to mark the centenary of alufoil.
Flexible packaging sales
“With flexible packaging sales at 40 per cent of the company total it is clear that we have a great opportunity to be an important part of Amcor’s future,” he said.
Its rigid plastics division accounts for a further 24 per cent of sales, with the rest divided amongst the non-flexibles in Australasia, tobacco packing, packaging distribution and the Asia Pacific flexible segment. North America and Europe are also keys sales regions – accounting for some 65 per cent of the total, Brues added.
He predicted that combining the key skills and packing specialisations of the two companies with the increased economies of scale the firm can now expect to command are major advantages that Amcor plans to optimise.
“Alcan comes from a foil background while Amcor history was in flexible packaging,” Brues said of the pre-merger situation. “Together we now have a great opportunity to out-innovate our competition, have more technology at our disposal and focus on using the skill-sets of the two companies.”
He said Amcor’s prime focus would be on optimising it supply scales and cutting cost bases to leverage profits both for the company and its customers. He did not rule out some rationalisation but stressed the current focus was on putting the administrative structure in place to “maximise cross fertilisation and avoid duplication”.
“I am not saying there will not be any rationalisation. We are making sure we are all moving in the same direction and not replicating programmes between two companies,” he said.