Constantia Flexibles, the world’s fourth largest flexible packaging group, is aiming to double its sales in India within the next five years. This is the result of its recent acquisition of a majority stake in India’s Creative Polypack Limited and successfully completing the transaction after all conditions were fulfilled. Constantia Flexibles Group is now the third largest flexible packaging company in India which includes its 2013 acquisition of Ahmedabad-based Parikh Packaging.
Constantia Flexibles is expecting to reach the Euro 200 million sales mark (approximately Indian Rs. 1,600 crore) in 2022, through market growth and ongoing investments. The flexible packaging market in India is expected to grow by more than 10% in the next five years, driven by megatrend such as urbanization and the expansion of the retail sector.
India has become the third largest economy in the world after USA and China, with high single-digit GDP growth, major infrastructure projects in roads and ports, a simplification of the tax system and rising private consumption, especially among the burgeoning middle-class. Alexander Baumgartner, Constantia Flexibles CEO said at a press conference in Mumbai on 30 April 2018, “We are proud to be here in India today to announce our ambitious growth plans in the fastest growing flexible packaging market worldwide. Our production footprint allows us to cover the whole of the Indian subcontinent and bring the latest innovative and sustainable packaging solutions to our valued customers.”
Baumgartner was joined at a press conference in Mumbai by Pavan Parikh, managing director and founder of Parikh Packaging, BK Maheswari managing director and founder of Creative Polypack, along with his son Giriraj Maheswari who is the joint managing director of Creative. Creative Polypack was founded in 1986 and is one of the leading flexible packaging groups in India.
Creative Polypack achieved sales of about Euro 75 million in the financial year ending 31 March 2018, and currently has about 850 employees at eight production sites in Baddi, Kanpur, Kolkata, Assam and Puducherry, in northern, eastern and southern India. It manufactures film-based flexible packaging for the food and home and personal care industries, as well as paper-based soap wrappers. The company supplies packaging materials to the leading domestic and international consumer goods companies in India.
In coming years, Creative Polypack intends to invest on average Euro 6 million euro (Indian Rs. 50 crore) each year in new production capacity, as well as other infrastructure, at its Kolkata, Baddi, Kanpur and Puducherry. Above all, it plans to double its capacity at the newly-established Assam site.
Prior to the Creative Polypack acquisition, Constantia Flexibles was already a leading supplier of film-based flexible packaging to the Indian market having taken over Ahmedabad-based Parikh Packaging in 2013. Creative with a strength of 500 employees, achieved sales of about Euro 35 million in 2017 supplying to the food and HPC industries.
Parikh Packaging is investing Indian Rs. 100 crore in a new greenfield site in Ahmedabad, which will be home to a polyethylene blown film extruder, a high-definition wide-web CI flexo press and laminators that it says will produce high barrier laminates that can be fully recycled. The greenfield capacity will come on stream in 2019.
Major FMCGs are demanding the highest level of sustainability for their packaging material and the new investment will help them to comply with upcoming Indian Plastic Waste Management regulations that promote only fully recyclable flexible packaging. The investment also fits in well with the Indian government’s campaign Swachh Bharat Abhiyan to clean the nation.
