Constantia Flexibles

Founded by Herbert Turnauer in the 1960s, the Vienna-based Constantia Flexibles group produces flexible packaging solutions for the pharmaceutical and consumer industries. Constantia Flexibles has successfully developed its activities and has become a global leader in flexible packaging. The group now has 7,030 employees in 15 countries, both figures excluding the recently announced India joint-venture and not pro-forma for the acquisition of Drukpol Flexo in Poland announced on March 2, 2023 or the Lászlópack acquisition announced on April 6, 2023.

The flexible packaging market for pharmaceutical and fastmoving consumer goods, in which Constantia Flexibles operates, offers a combination of stability and growth. The business of Constantia Flexibles is resilient because the group caters to the daily needs of end-consumers. In addition, there are long-term megatrends supporting the growth of the flexible packaging market, such as growing population, urbanization and the increased consumption of single portions, tied in with the decline in the size of households and the development of the middle classes, especially in emerging markets. For several years, this market’s growth in GDP terms has outpaced economic growth in developed and emerging countries. Under Wendel’s ownership, Constantia has focused on the most dynamic sub-segments within that market, enabling the company to further enhance its growth profile.

In this fast-growing, resilient but highly fragmented market, Constantia Flexibles has clear competitive advantages enabling it to play a decisive role in the flexible packaging industry and offering long-term (organic and inorganic) growth potential, such as:

• the group’s long-standing relationships with major global blue-chip customers and local champions;
• the size of the group, enabling it to harness economies of scale;
• the group’s innovation capabilities and technological edge, which position the group at the forefront of the packaging sustainability transformation opportunity and allows it to tap into attractive adjacent industries;
• the group’s strategically located well-invested global manufacturing base; and
• the ability of Constantia Flexibles to pursue an external growth strategy, as demonstrated recently with the acquisition of Propak in Turkey, FFP in the UK, Drukpol Flexo in Poland and Lászlópack in Hungary, as well as the formation of the announced joint-venture with Premji Invest and SB Packagings in India.

2023 shows a very promising start of the year with continued progress targeted in volume, EBITDA and cash generation.

In 2021, Constantia Flexibles initiated a strategy called Vision 2025. This strategic roadmap refocuses strategic priorities primarily towards boosting growth and profitability. It also aimed to strengthen organic growth through innovation, the sustainable packaging technologies segment and the new EcoLutions sustainable product range. Constantia Flexibles is also continuously looking at inorganic growth opportunities to take advantage of the fragmented flexible packaging market, through selective consolidation in Europe and worldwide. The company has set the following financial objectives for 2025: organic growth of at least 2% per year, and an EBITDA margin of at least 14% (based on 2020 price levels). Constantia is carefully managing the inflationary cost environment as well as realizing synergies from the recent acquisitions.

Sustainability issues are an integral part and driver of Constantia Flexibles’ innovation strategy. Given the company’s global presence, Constantia Flexibles started to develop mono-material packaging in 2014, when this discussion was still at an early stage in Europe.

To meet the challenge of a circular economy without compromising on functional requirements, Constantia Flexibles launched the more sustainable packaging product range “Ecolutions” in 2018. Ecolutions meet both customer sustainability requests and legal requirements with a clear focus on recyclability while maintaining all the properties required to protect the packaged products. Within the Ecolutions family, Constantia Flexibles promotes mono-material solutions that can achieve high barriers and replace standard non-recyclable multi-layer structures. Furthermore, the company’s 360-degree approach covers all common substrates, such as paper, film, and foil packaging. Ecolutions are available in a certified chain of custody materials (ASI, FSC).

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