Since 2021, Blaige & Company moved into the third decade of proprietary research on the impact of the global consolidation across the packaging sector. As discussed in the Blaige proprietary Twenty-One-Year Plastics and Packaging Mergers and Acquisitions Consolidation Study, on average, 74% of 2001’s top 50 packaging companies have undergone change of ownership or been eliminated over the past 20 years. Mr. Blaige will discuss the main valuation drivers of the sector as well as the headwinds for business owners in the 2024 economic environment. Mr. Blaige will reveal valuable strategies designed to help company owners understand how to use mergers and acquisitions as a valuable tool.

Why Packaging Processors are Hot Commodities?

1. Extreme Fragmentation Attracting a Growing Number of Consolidators, Record Amounts of Investment Capital, and Driving up Valuations for All Sector Participants.

2. Historical Large-Cap Consolidation Trend Moving Downstream to Small/Mid-Cap Converters Over the Next Decade, Increasing Demand for and Valuation of Regional Converters.

3. Global Customers / Brand Owners Demand Expansive Footprint and Multiple Products, Inducing Large-Caps to Acquire Small/Mid-Cap Converters, Thus, Increasing Demand and Valuations.

Strengthening Headwinds for Small/Mid-Cap Packaging Converters:

1. Customers Are Demanding Suppliers with the Scale to Offer Multiple, Redundant Operations and Broader Capabilities and Processes, which are Often Beyond the Budget of Most Small/Mid-Cap Packaging Converters.

2. Horizontal and Vertical Integration Shifting Cost Structures and Tilting Competitive Landscape Against Small/Mid-Caps.

3. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Push Making It Increasingly Costly and Difficult to Compete.

4. Succession Crisis: “Betting the Farm”.

How to Secure the Value Created Over Past Decades? Blaige Secret Sauce:

1. Positioning to tell the best story

2. Politely disregard preemptive inquiries

3. Create a discrete but highly competitive bidding process