Coffee service supplier Melitta Group Management GmbH & Co. KG is buying a controlling stake in flexible packaging maker Cuki Group SpA.
Melitta is buying all of the shares from Corrado Ariaudo, the majority owner of Cuki, which produces Italian food packaging and garbage bags under the Cuki and Domopak brnads.
This deal, still subject to competition and other official approval, will expand Melitta's international footprint, including into the Italian market and grow the group's household products business.
The two companies are already close: Melitta has held an 18 percent share in Cuki's operating subsidiary, Cuki Cofresco for the past 20 years.
In addition, the purchase will help settle an ongoing financial restructuring process at the indebted Cuki Group which has battled to clear debt of up to 250 million euros ($290.2 million) since 2006, according to Ariaudo, Cuki's chairman and CEO.
Sixty-year-old Cuki Group produces a range of Cuki and Domopak brand film and aluminum flexible packaging for food along with storage and rubbish bags, mainly for the Italian market. It employs 503 and generated 2017 sales of around 200 million euros ($232 million).
The firm runs three Italian plants in Pontinia, Nervesa della Battaglia and Frosinone; a plant in Istanbul, Turkey serving markets in the Balkans and the Middle East, and as well as a unit for paperboard and aluminium containers at La Terrasse, France.
In addition, Cuki Cofresco has a 50 percent joint venture stake with a local partner in a newly launched operation in Poland, Cuki Alfatec in Poznan focused on Eastern European customers.
Melitta, a specialist maker of coffee service products, including manufacturing filter coffee machines in China, also produces a range of packaging such as clingfilm, freezer bags, coffee filters and metal wrapping foil. It has other plants in Germany, Poland, Brazil and the U.S.