DS Smith is looking for growth on the Romanian packaging market

DS Smith announced the completion of its 208 million Euro acquisition of EcoPack and EcoPaper, Romania. The acquisition significantly increases DS Smith's capacity to serve customers in a high-growth region as well as supporting the company's existing operations in Eastern Europe.

2018-03-08 11:17:20

"Our short, medium and long-term objective is to grow and continue to develop our business, considering that the market has big potential," Miles Roberts, CEO of DS Smith, said in an interview for The Diplomat-Bucharest. "All past acquisition had a positive influence on our global evolution, so we are confident that this new transaction in Romania will keep the same trend. As our LSE financial reports show, we have an organic growth every year. In 2016, the group turnover increased by six per cent to 4.8 billion pounds and last year, after six months, we had a 5.2 per cent advance."

According to Miles Roberts, the packaging market is a dynamic one all over the world including in Romania: "In the context of the expansion of e-commerce, this importance is growing rapidly. In our opinion, the market has a potential of 600 million Euro, but we anticipate a fast-growing evolution in the years ahead."

With the takeover of the majority stake in the two newly acquired factories, DS Smith's market share will be between 10 per cent and 15 per cent.

Miles Roberts underlined the packaging market is extremely dynamic and has had a constant growth every year because of the positive evolution of the consumer goods industry, the growth of online commerce ant the change in the consumers behaviour.

In his opinion, the two factories are complementary to the existing client data base: "DS Smith owns two other productions units in Romania and offers significant cost-related synergies. With the acquisition of the two factories in Romania, we become one of the local market leaders."

DS Smith will retain the existing 400 employees and could increase the workforce of the two newly acquired factories as demand grows.