DS Smith click and collects Spanish group Europac for £1.5 billion
Amazon packaging supplier DS Smith click-and-collected a Spanish cardboard box company for £1.5 billion on Monday.
The FTSE 100 firm is adding Madrid-listed Europac to its shopping basket for €16.80 a share to take advantage of Spain and Portugal’s fast-growing online shopping market.
Europac is the latest swoop in the region for DS Smith after the takeover of Spanish firms Andopack in 2014 and Lantero in 2015, and Portugal’s Gopaca in 2016.
“Iberia is seeing strong growth as the region recovers. We have a huge presence in Spanish e-commerce. We badly need capacity in Western Europe because we are growing very fast,” DS Smith chief executive Miles Roberts said.
Packaging sales in the region were up 5% last year, against 3% for the rest of Europe, while e-commerce in the Iberian peninsula shot up 25%. Europac employs 2300 people across 23 sites in Spain, Portugal and France, and has annual sales of £750 million.
The deal is backed by nearly 60% of Europac investors, including the founding Isidro family, which owns 42%.
DS Smith, which has 28,500 employees, has ballooned into a £6 billion global giant thanks to the rise of online shopping giants such as Amazon, which uses its cardboard wrappers and boxes for deliveries.
The company is raising £1 billion of new equity to fund the deal through Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citi.
DS Smith is also reviewing its plastic unit, which makes the packaging that goes inside cardboard boxes, and that could prompt a sale. The unit accounts for 7% of revenues.
