Alcan’s Food Packaging Americas sector had been lead by Ilene Gordon, who held the position of president since 2004. But as of December 1 of last year, Gordon was named Senior Vice President of Alcan, Inc. and CEO of Alcan Packaging.

Filling Gordon’s shoes as president of the Food Packaging Americas unit is Mike Schmitt, who previously held the position of president of the Specialty Flexibles Packaging unit.

“We’ve had a lot of internal promotions, which speaks well of our succession plan that's been in place,” says Schmitt.

The rest of the executive management team that joins Schmitt as part of the new-look Alcan Food Packaging Americas includes Mike Curia, former head of the bottle unit, now vice president and general manager of the Food and Specialty business unit; Gene Welsh, former VP of sales and marketing, now VP and GM of the Meat and Dairy business unit; David Pastrich, who remains VP and GM of the Labels business unit; and Richard Company, VP and GM of the South American business unit.

This represents the most significant reorganization within the company since it acquired Pechiney in 2003.

In early May, Alcoa, Inc. made an offer to acquire all of the outstanding common shares of Alcan Inc. for $58.60 in cash and 0.4108 of a share of Alcoa common stock for each outstanding common share of Alcan. Based on Alcoa’s closing stock price on May 4, 2007, the offer had a value of $73.25 per Alcan share or approximately $33 billion in enterprise value.

The offer was rejected by Alcan, citing that the bid was too low.

In response, Alcoa’s CEO Alain Belda said the company will not make a higher offer, as the company believes the offer was fair.

“We think the offer is full,” Alcoa’s chief executive officer Alain Belda told a session at a JP Morgan conference. “At the moment, we think that is is a full price. It’s a significant premium,” Belda said. “I’d hate to have to go higher than that at this point.”

Altivity Packaging was born when Texas Pacific Group bought Smurfit-Stone Container Corp.’s consumer packaging segment for $1.04 billion in the summer of 2006, and soon after acquired Field Container Co. to form a broad-based packaging company that is an industry leader in not only flexible packaging, but also rigid folding cartons. This gives Altivity a unique position in the packaging world.

“[The flexible packaging division] is the largest marketshare supplier of multi-wall bags by a very large margin, and a significant producer of flexible packaging or plastic products as well as being an industry leading supplier of label products of a variety of constructions,” says Gary McDaniel, vice president and general manager of the company’s flexible packaging division. “We’re the largest supplier by far of heat-transfer labels; we’re an industry leader in shrink sleeve label production, and an industry leader in the litho-label or cut-and-stack paper label market.”

In early 2006, Packaging Dynamics and specialty paper manufacturer Thilmany merged to form Packaging Dynamics Corp., with combined annual sales of about $750 million and dual headquarters in Chicago, Ill. and Kaukauna, Wisc. The new combined company manufactures packaging and specialty industrial materials at plants in eight states.

Packaging Dynamics’ parent company, the private investor firm Kohlberg & Co., bought Thilmany from International Paper Co.

In early 2006, AEA Investors completed the acquisition of all of Pactiv Corp.’s protective and flexible business units for approximately $530 million. The acquired businesses now operate as Pregis Corp., a new entity. The acquisition includes diverse protective, flexible, and foodservice packaging and hospital supply products in North America and Europe. James D. Morris will serve as CEO of Pregis, to be supported by the following former Pactiv employees: Andy Brewer, president, Protective Packaging North America; Peter Lewis, president, Protective and Foodservice Packaging Europe; Bill McBee, president, Hexacomb; Hartmut Scherf, president, Flexibles; Dieter Eberle, president, Hospital Supplies; and Kevin Corcoran, CFO.