The Siegwerk Group, Siegburg, Germany, has announced plans to acquire the packaging ink division of SICPA Holding SA. A corresponding purchase agreement was signed in London on June 16, 2005.   

With consolidated total net sales of €613 million ($740 million) in the packaging ink segment, the Siegwerk Group would emerge as the world’s second-largest manufacturer of packaging ink. The Siegwerk Group would move up to become one of the world’s top five ink manufacturers with consolidated total net sales of €773 million ($935 million). Regulatory approval is expected from the anti-trust authorities in the course of the summer months.

With this strategic repositioning SICPA, the global leader in inks for banknotes and documents of value, will focus on its highly successful security inks and systems businesses for governments and industry.

“The acquisition is a major step towards the Siegwerk Group consolidating its worldwide presence and positioning as a global player,” said Herbert Forker, president and CEO of Siegwerk. “We can now supply globally operating converters as well as national clients in every country in the world and support them in application engineering. This also makes us an interesting partner for the major brand companies.”

“With this acquisition, we will be able to offer the most comprehensive expertise in the packaging ink industry worldwide,” said Peter Heimerzheim, corporate spokesman of the Siegwerk Group.

“We have tremendous respect for the SICPA organization, its people, products and processes,” said Dan McDowell, president, North America. “SICPA will add additional capacities and capabilities in the form of products, geographical coverage in terms of sales and service and manufacturing. There is also the notion of customer relations in which our two organization seem to be very complementary with little overlap.”

The new group will possess an enhanced capability to meet worldwide located customer requirements. Siegwerk Group is well positioned in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia and, since the purchase of CCI in December 2003, also in the U.S.

SICPA’s Packaging Ink Division supplements this positioning with its strong presence in Southern Europe, Turkey, Scandinavia and Russia including its neighboring states, South Africa, North America, South America as well as in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region, including China, India and Australia.

“In the Asia/Pacific region, Siegwerk Group becomes one of the most important players in the packaging ink industry,” Mr. Heimerzheim said. “We move up to be top with €75 million in sales and a straight market position in flexible packaging, sheetfed/UV packaging, tobacco and labels.”

On the product side, the expertise of Siegwerk Group in the areas of film and foil printing (flexible packaging for foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals and hygiene items), paper labels (high-quality labels for bottled drinks) and wallpaper printing is being expanded by the know-how of SICPA in tobacco packaging and foil labels, as well as in the corrugated board sector and with other applications.

“By merging both companies, we will be able to provide an even wider range of high-quality products in the future,” Mr. Heimerzheim said. “The expertise of both companies with packaging ink for flexible packaging and tobacco is supplemented by SICPA’s packaging know-how with tobacco, labels, industrial applications and corrugated board. Siegwerk’s and SICPA’s employees are both dedicated to high quality products and perfect service. Together, we will become the top supplier to the world’s leading converters and the local converters.”

“In narrow web, especially for labels and tobacco packaging, Siegwerk gets good products and service-oriented employees,” Mr. Heimerzheim added. “The acquisition adds two well known companies to a strong unity, especially in tobacco packaging.”

“There are various synergistic products that SICPA has in its portfolio,” Mr. McDowell said. “Both of our organizations will be spending time in the near future investigating these to look for how these shared products can benefit both of us. Siegwerk/CCI is not familiar with the narrow web market and looks forward to gaining that expertise. We anticipate tremendous technological synergies and predict many benefits for our customers.”

In addition to packaging ink Siegwerk Group produces ink for print media. In this segment Siegwerk Group is the market leader in Europe and South America in the field of publication gravure ink for magazines and catalogs, and ranks among the top five European providers of web offset ink.

Founded in 1830, the Siegwerk Group is the third-largest European printing ink manufacturer with 1,300 employees and net 2004 sales of €375 million. The company has 10 subsidiaries worldwide and is represented in more than 50 other countries.