CCL Industries, a world leader in specialty label, security and packaging solutions, announced it has signed a binding agreement to acquire Pouch Partners s.r.l. Italy (“Pouch Partners”) from Pouch Partners AG Switzerland, a company owned by Swiss headquartered Capri-Sun Group. Pouch Partners, currently a provider of flexible laminates to the Capri Sun Group to make its iconic Capri Sun pouches, has been operating as a family owned business for the last 50 years and has been part of the Capri Sun Group since October 2017.

Guenther Birkner, President of CCL Label Food & Beverage, commented: “Pouches are a packaging format we’ve looked at for a long time as an adjacency to our label and sleeve decorating technologies with a similar modus operandi. Our common customers see them as an interesting alternative to rigid containers with labels. Pouch Partners has highly focused, deep know-how for these materials, a solid foundation to enter this market. If our investment is successful in Europe, there could be interest to develop the product line globally, alongside our decorative label portfolio.”

For several years there has been a lot of development and innovation in the packaging market with the goal to make packaging more reusable and recyclable to support a circular economy. One major trend has been to provide a refillable solution for the parent packaging. Typically the parent packaging is a more premium bottle or container and the pouches provide the refill option.

The new business will then trade as CCL Specialty Pouches and become an integral part of CCL Label’s Food & Beverage division. “There are opportunities to utilize this technology in the Food & Beverage and the Home & Personal Care spaces and interesting potential to design new, sustainable, barrier films at our sister company Innovia Films - experts in material science and develop the packaging materials of the future. We see many of our global brand customers turn to alternative packaging solutions to substitute packaging that has a high carbon footprint, and pouches provide a lightweight solution”, says Reinhard Streit, Vice President & Managing Director Food & Beverage Europe.

Pouches, made from flexible material, are designed to minimize the use of packaging materials. They are very light and reduce the ecological footprint during transportation and storage. They have an outstanding packaging-to-product ratio compared to rigid packaging types and the shape and the format can be adjusted to exactly fit the product volume resulting in material savings*. CCL is working with its sustainability partners along the whole value chain with organizations like CELAB, Plastic Recycler’s Europe and RecyClass to make sure the pouches can and will be recycled.

“After the development of our recyclable pouch for Capri Sun with the help of Pouch Partners, it was time to focus again on our core business: Beverages. Divesting the business to CCL, a large and successful player in packaging, makes a lot of sense for the future. We are excited to continue to partner with CCL, now as a strategic customer, and will for sure benefit from their deep expertise, R&D resource and worldwide presence”, said Roland Weening, CEO of the Capri Sun Group and Chairman of Pouch Partners AG.

*Source: Flexible Packaging Europe (FPE)