Austrian flexible packaging producer Constantia Flexibles (Vienna; www.cflex.com) recently signed an agreement to acquire Spear Group (Cincinnati, Ohio / USA; www.spearinc.com), one of the world’s leading label manufacturers. Financial details of the deal, which still has to meet the necessary regulatory approval, were not disclosed. Commenting on the acquisition, Constantia Flexibles CEO Thomas Unger said, “We will be able to serve our customers even better together with Spear, a leading beverage labels business with a highly attractive, global, blue-chip customer base.”

Spear specialises in the manufacture of pressure sensitive labels for the beverage industry. The company’s 650 employees last posted sales of USD 195m. Aside from four plants in North America, the Mason-based business also operates a facility in Wales / UK as well as South Africa, in addition to a sales office in Singapore. The group’s European facility in Cwmbran operates seven printing machines and is capable of turning out more than 25 bn labels, making it Spear’s largest multi-print-technology plant. The company not only serves the European market from this Welsh site, but also Russia, North Africa and the Middle East.

The purchase is part of the Austrian group’s international growth strategy – for more information, see also Plasteurope.com of 29.09.2011. Earlier this year, Constantia Flexibles, which has more than 6,500 employees across 20 countries, acquired Mexican flexible packaging and folding carton producer Globalpack (Guadalajara; www.global-pack.com) – see Plasteurope.com of 22.01.2013.