Ardagh buys into US glass market

Irish glass and packaging group Ardagh has made its first foray into the US glass market via an acquisition believed to be worth more than $200m (€151m).

The group has bought Leone Industries — a New Jersey-based manufacturer of glass containers — for an undisclosed sum, which industry sources have estimated to be around the $230m (€174m) mark.

Ardagh Group chief executive Niall Wall said that the move marks “an important step in developing our international glass franchise, and will add scale and value to our business. We’re very pleased to have completed the acquisition... which will assist us to expand our US activities into the glass container market.”

Ardagh already has a presence in North America, via its ownership of international metal packaging giant Impress, but this is the company’s first taste of the North American glass market. The deal will increase the size of Ardagh’s glass division by roughly 10%.

For its part, the previously family-owned Leone Industries is a significant player; producing more than 500 million containers per year for clients situated across the US, Canada, Mexico and parts of the Caribbean.

Ardagh has made a number of high profile acquisitions in the past couple of years. In January, when it had announced its agreement to buy the Boxal aluminium packaging group for €85m (a deal which was formally completed earlier this month), it said that it was in advanced talks on two further unrelated acquisitions. While talks regarding one of them recently fell through, the Leone deal has transpired as the result of the other set of talks.

A recent issuing of over $400m worth of senior bonds raised the requisite proceeds to allow Ardagh cover the costs of a number of its most recent acquisitions and repay a certain amount of net debt.

Ardagh’s total size is such now that it is seen as a leading player in the rigid packaging sector; with clients including most of the world’s leading food, beverage and consumer care brands, including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Heinz, Danone, Diageo and Heineken. It now operates out of 91 manufacturing plants across 25 countries.