Ukrainian JSC to buy plastics closure plant

Ukrainian PET packaging and caps specialist Uniplast Closed Joint Stock Company (JSC) is to buy a plastics closure moulding plant in Bryansk, Russia.

JSC will buy the facility from Moscow-based PET resin and preform producer Retal Industries. The acquisition is being made by the Ukrainian group's Russian subsidiary JSC Pet-Rus which launched a preforms and LDPE closures plant two years ago in Noginsk near Moscow.

Retal's Bryansk facility, acquired by Retal in 2004, has a closure capacity of 1.8 billion units per year and annual sales of ?14m in 2006. That same year, Retal consolidated all its closure manufacture in Bryansk when the company moved moulding equipment from other sites. Today, it sells its production in Belorussia and Ukraine as well as in Russia.

Retal is disposing of the plastic closures business because it aims to focus on its three core areas of production: PET preforms, PET resin and PET film. The deal was due to be concluded by the start of 2008.

This year Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine-based Uniplast, plans an overall annual polyethylene closure capacity of 4.9 billion units. It operates a 210m unit per year cap moulding plant in Astana, Kasakhstan, which also opened in 2006. In addition, Uniplast produces closures at its main plant in Dnepropetrovsk.

This year, Uniplast expects to have a total preforms output of 7.5bn per year. Apart from its Ukrainian plant, the company opened a 670m preform per year plant in Krasnodar, Russia in 2006. It now plans to launch its own preform production in Europe to serve the European packaging market.

At its Ukrainian plant, Uniplast operates a total of 26 preform injection presses and eight presses for closures, all supplied by Husky Injection Molding Systems.

Retal employs more than 1,200 with 16 plants in eight European countries. The company recorded annual sales of ?484m in 2006.