Major merger: Stella Plastic acquires Rosti

Stella Plastic Holding AB, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nordstjernan AB investment group, has acquired all of the operations of processor Rosti Technical Plastics (RTP; Larkhall, Scotland) outside the U.S., and has an option to acquire those three facilities, too. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The new merged company, headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, will be named Rosti. CEO at the merged company, which will have a turnover of more than €150 million and around 1800 employees, will be Börje Vernet, presently CEO of Stella. Divesting Rosti is international shipping major A.P. Møller–Mærsk.

Rosti is a contract injection molder serving a variety of industries including domestic appliances, office equipment, automotive, and, increasingly, medical. In the past 12 months RTP had sales of €112 million. It runs processing facilities in China, India, The Netherlands, Poland, and Scotland.

Stella has facilities in Sweden and Germany for injection molding of food and beverage closures and some medical packaging. It reached sales of €42 million in its last 12 months, and lays claim to 100 molding machines. Nordstjernan, its owner, is a family-controlled investment group which had turnover greater than €6 billion in the last 12 months. “Nordstjernan is looking for substantial add-on acquisitions for most of our holdings and we are happy to have found RTP for our company, Stella. RTP is Nordstjernan’s first investment in Denmark and we hope it will be followed by more Danish investments,” says Tomas Billing, president of Nordstjernan, in a statement.

The transaction is subject to customary approvals from competition authorities and is expected to be completed during Q1 2010.
MPW has visited two Rosti sites to include its facility in China; read the report here. —[email protected]