Consolidation fever gets Alto Holdings

New Zealand's largest plastic packaging business, Alto Holdings, has been sold to an Australian company for about $200 million.

Investment company Masthead completed a takeover of rival plastics firm Vertex last May which it then delisted and amalgamated with Alto.

The exact amount paid by Melbourne-based Visy Industrial Packaging was not released although Masthead director Mark Stewart said a value of $200 million was "in the ball park".

Alto generates revenue of more than $170 million a year, while in 2005 Visy Industrial had a revenue of A$358 million ($432 million).

Although a separate company, Stewart said Visy Industrial was deemed by the Commerce Commission to be associated with the larger Visy group.

The Visy group, owned by the Pratt family, has a revenue of more than $3 billion and about 8000 employees.

"So they're big boys all right," Stewart said. But in world terms, that was not enormous, which was why Visy was keen on consolidating.

Stewart said he could also see the logic for consolidation.

"At the end of the day, they put a price on the table that was reasonable and we felt that maybe our opportunities were best served in moving into something else as well."

He knew Visy were interested "but we didn't know how interested until they actually applied for Commerce Commission approval".

Stewart said more consolidation in the Australasian market place was needed.

"I believe consolidation is occurring across these two markets and they need to otherwise there will be no more jobs in this part of the world for these types of industries."

An increasingly competitive global market place had made the environment for domestic manufacturers tougher than ever.

"For years and years, we at least had Australasia to ourselves but it's not like that anymore."

Alto employs 840 staff at plants in Auckland, Hamilton, Hawkes Bay, Wellington and Christchurch.

As part of the deal, all employees will be kept on under existing terms.

Stewart said transtasman shifts of company ownership had been taking place for years.

"We're passionate New Zealanders ... the fact that we may have sold a business overseas doesn't necessarily mean that the money is going overseas because it's not."

Masthead is looking for other businesses in which to invest.