The divestment deal sees Silgan acquire Albéa’s global dispensing systems business, its Covit Europe and US metal business, and all its Brazilian industrial clusters.
Initially announced back in January, this year, full financial details of the divestment remained undisclosed, but both companies signed a transition services agreement to ensure “business continuity” for customers and a “smooth integration” for the teams transitioning.
‘Strategic ambitions’ for legacy business divisions
“We wish the best going forward to all the teams joining Silgan for an exciting future,” said François Luscan, president and CEO of Albéa.
Luscan said Albéa would now invest energy and resources in the company’s “legacy” divisions – tubes, cosmetic rigid packaging and beauty solutions – where it had “strategic ambitions”.
Growth of these businesses, he said, would be done with Albéa’s “distinctive culture and strong commitment to corporate social responsibility” considered.
Tube innovation in collaboration with brands
Albéa’s tube business made news last year thanks to its collaborative work alongside international beauty major L’Oréal to co-develop paper-based cosmetic tubes. The tubes were set to be industrially produced and launched this year across some of L’Oréal’s skin care brands.
Gilles Swyngedauw, vice president of corporate social responsibility, innovation and marketing at Albéa, said the collaborative approach taken with L’Oréal had been key to the project’s success.
“It is only through collaboration with our customers and partners that we can invent the safe, circular, minimum-impact packaging that the beauty market wants,” Swyngedauw said at the time.
Albéa also partnered with Colgate-Palmolive for the development of its fully-recyclable toothpaste tubes, launched across the UK and EU at the start of this year.
Albéa spotlights beauty circularity
Earlier this year at ADF&PCD Paris, Albéa’s group sustainability manager Aude Charbonneaux told attendees at one of the show’s talks that progression in sustainable cosmetics packaging had to be “responsible” and all supply chain actors had to be “aligned with one another”.
“We are in a new era of transparency. So, everything we do – all the decisions we make, all the providers we work with – all of this is under the spotlight. All of our relationships with different partners or different clients have to be transparent,” Charbonneaux said.
In July, last year, Albéa published its first sustainability report, outlining the company’s past, current and future approach to environmental sustainability and laying out five ways Albéa was working towards a circular approach in cosmetics and personal care packaging.
