Almost one month after the completion of the Integrated Packaging Group's (IPG) acquisition of three Amcor facilities, the stretch film wrap manufacturer is looking forward to what the $22m deal will bring.
In October last year, IPG acquired the three facilities (in Cheltenham, Chester Hill and Kirrawee) from plastic and paper manufacturing giant Amcor as part of its Aperio acquisition.
The next step, according to Rob Archibald, general manager, sales and marketing at IPG, is to ensure that business continues smoothly for both IPG staff and its clients.
IPG has a 100 day plan to review the business and implement a number of synergies.
"An example would be that at the moment we have a separate sales office and warehouse in Sydney at Regents Park and that will close down and those sales people and all that stock will move over to Chester Hill. So we'll be looking to do some things like that," Archibald told Food magazine.
"Other than that, our priorities are probably two-fold: the new employees and making sure everything's operating efficiently there, and secondly our customers. We'll have a range of things we'll need to do in the short term in regards to new supply agreements and getting suppliers set up because they might not have traded with IPG in the past … So lots of communication with the customers, advising them of the acquisition and the new details in terms of ordering and invoicing and those sorts of things," he said.
In addition to these synergies, IPG will also be capitalising on the broader product range it now offers, with further penetration in food and beverage manufacturing a top priority.
"That's a major market for both our current business and the new business. Particularly now we have new capability which includes extrusion – polyethylene essentially is the main extrusion product and we also, through the new acquisition – have printing, laminating and converting opportunities.
"Also, with the Kirrawee acquisition, that plant produces PVC food wrap films. That, for us, is a new product and market so it takes us into both the industrial and commercial side of food wrapping, so that's things like meat trays and catering packs," said Archibald.
"And the two largest customers for Chester Hill are the breweries, so at that site we do the printed shrink films for Lion and Fosters and plenty of others. There will be customers that we've dealt with as the traditional IPG and there'll be customers that the new businesses deal with that IPG didn't in the past and they're the customers that we'll be looking to really offer a broader product offering to – be it stretch film, printed films, shrink films, laminated films. So that's right through that food and beverage area."