Onex buying packaging maker SIG Combibloc for US$4.7 billion

Canadian buyout firm Onex Corp. is acquiring SIG Combibloc Group AG, a Switzerland-based manufacturer of aseptic carton packaging and plastics closures, for approximately US$4.7 billion.

Toronto-based Onex will pay an initial US$4 billion to Reynolds Group Holdings Ltd., part of Auckland-based Rank Group Ltd., when the deal is closed in the first quarter, with the remainder dependent on SIG meeting financial targets over the next two years, the company said in a statement.

SIG, which was founded in the 1850s as a railway carmaker, had sales of 1.68 billion euros in 2013, and employs more than 5,100 workers in about 40 countries.

Onex is said to be Canada’s largest buyout firm, and the SIG acquisition is hardly its first involvement in plastics. From 2007 until 2011, the company owned Husky Injection Molding Systems, and it currently owns Connecticut-based extrusion equipment maker Davis-Standard LLC.