Northlake, Ill.-based Scholle IPN, a manufacturer of films, fitments and equipment for bag-in-box and pouch packaging, acquired Bossar Packing SA, a Spanish supplier of flexible horizontal form-fill-seal (HFFS) packaging equipment for food, beverage, nom-food and aseptic uses.
Scholle will retain the Bossar brand, its 150 employees, and continue to use Bossar's operational headquarters in Barcelona and its manufacturing facility in Pune, India.
No other terms of the deal, which was announced March 11, were disclosed.
"We now have 18 locations around the globe and I have every expectation that we will be expanding on our Bossar capabilities and Bossar production, certainly not shrinking," Scholle IPN President and CEO Ross Bushnell said in a phone interview.
Bossar became an attractive acquisition target following collaboration on some projects.
"Bossar has been manufacturing filling machines for a long time and the IPN side of Scholle has been manufacturing fitments for 25 years, so there have been ties with the two businesses working together," Bushnell said. "We've explored bag-in-box technologies and capabilities as well. Over the years we've gotten closer to them."
As Scholle IPN officials looked at ways to strengthen the three legs of its strategic stool — film, fitments and equipment — Bossar came to mind.
"We saw an opportunity to buy into a terrific brand with a nice established base and a company we feel like we can leverage not just across our equipment side of the business but our consumables business with film and fitments," Bushnell said.
The combined companies will offer one-stop shopping for the global flexible packaging market, Bushnell said, calling the acquisition "a hand-and-glove fit" that gives it operations across Europe, Russia, China, India, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Canada and the United States.
"This is an opportunity to take Scholle IPN's experience in film and fitments and liquid packaging and the work we're doing in sustainable offerings and combine it with Bossar's experience in HFFS and bag-in-box filling equipment capabilities," Bushnell said. "They have the most highly developed technology in the equipment market."
Founded in 1992, Bossar's website credits the company with HFFS pouch machinery advances, including the first modular machines, the carousel system for pouch transport, aseptic pouch packaging applications, and pre-made pouch filling equipment. The HFFS equipment produces flexible packaging like spouted pouches, zippered pouches, and sachets.
Bossar CEO Jeroen van der Meer, who is also managing director of Scholle IPN in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the acquisition furthers Scholle IPN's goal to create lightweight, environmentally-conscious flexible packaging solutions for the circular economy.
"By combining Bossar and Scholle IPN, we are able to truly focus our development activity to provide leading edge technologies that enable us to manufacture a complete range of sustainable packaging solutions for our customers." van der Meer said in a news release. "Already today, our products provide sustainable solutions through substantial reductions in packaging weight while extending shelf-life, reducing energy consumption and minimizing food waste."
In other recent news, Scholle IPN expanded in Russia earlier this year, adding office and warehouse space to a production plant that opened in Voronezh in August 2020 to serve Eastern Europe.