Private equity group Olympus Partners (Stamford, Connecticut / USA; www.olympuspartners.com) has completed the purchase of DS Smith’s (London / UK; www.dssmith.com) plastics division through its portfolio company Liquibox (Richmond, Virginia / USA; www.liquibox.com).

It announced the division’s flexible packaging and Worldwide Dispensers businesses would be consolidated into the Liquibox brand, a global leader in liquid packaging and dispensing. The division’s rigid businesses for extruded, injection-moulded and foam products will be broken up into three newly branded and independently operated businesses to be known, respectively, as Corplex, DW Reusables and Engineered Foam Products. Each of these three business units will execute on new growth plans under the new ownership structure.

Olympus Partners acquired the plastics division for an enterprise value of around EUR 517m – see Plasteurope.com of 07.03.2019. Liquibox also sold its UK bag-in-box business to Peak Packaging (Ilkeston, Derbyshire / UK; www.peakpackaging.co.uk) to comply with UK anti-trust requirements – see Plasteurope.com of 21.10.2019.

Corplex is a specialist in extruded plastic products for automotive, pharmaceutical, retail, reusable and other segments. It operates out of seven sales and manufacturing facilities in France, Slovakia, Spain, the UK and the US. Olympus said it would continue to invest in Corplex and consolidate the latter’s position to be a market leader for fluted plastic extruded products.