Toronto-based CCL Industries Inc. will try to capitalize on five years of solid Asian sales with a C$25 million (US$24.7 million) expansion of its CCL Label operations during 2008 and 2009.
The packaging supplier will build four new plants — in China, India, Thailand and Vietnam — and will expand facilities in China and Japan, the company said.
CCL entered Asian markets in 2003 with a plant in Bangkok, Thailand, which since has undergone two expansions. In 2006 and 2007, CCL invested in additional operations in Guangzhou and Hefei, China. The company's Asian sales are projected to reach C$40 million (US$39.5 million) in 2008.
``Emerging-market sales now represent 17 percent of our label business, but we would like to see that grow to 30 percent in the next three to five years, to be more closely aligned with the sales of our most important global customers,'' Geoffrey Martin, CCL's president and chief executive officer, said in a news release.
The expansions will include several firsts:
* The plant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, will mark CCL's entry into that country and will focus on personal-care products.
* A new facility in Pune, India, will focus on personal- and health-care markets.
* A Tianjin, China, site will be the company's first health-care plant in China and will produce labels for personal-care customers.
* The company's second plant in Bangkok will produce beverage and battery labels for Southeast Asia and Australia.
* The company will expand the capability of the Hefei plant to supply home and personal-care products to customers in the Shanghai region.
* CCL's sales and technical center in Japan will grow to become a pilot plant for personal-care labels.
Each of the four new CCL Label plants will employ 60-100. The Japanese sales center in Tokyo, which employs two, may expand to 10 with the pilot plant, according to Steve Lancaster, CCL Industries executive vice president and acting chief financial officer.
As for the company's entry to Vietnam, ``This is a market with 85 million people, with tremendous potential for personal-care products,'' he said in a recent telephone interview. ``We have high expectations.''
CCL Industries employs about 5,400 and has 55 production facilities in the Americas, Asia and Europe. CCL Container and CCL Tube produce plastic bottles and tubes for the North American market.