Verpack

The family-owned business Verpack, a leading supplier to luxury brands founded in 1993 in Paris by Jean-Claude Viers, is finalizing a managerial and shareholding transition operation that started four years ago. Stéphane Viers takes over as Chairman with majority voting rights in the holding set up for this occasion. Crédit Mutuel Equity becomes a minority reference shareholder with 25% of capital, alongside key company managers. This LBO operation advised by Pax Corporate Finance enables Verpack to intensify its growth by pursuing its external growth strategy. Verpack had a turnover of over 42 Million euros in 2019 and has a workforce of 450 employees.

Verpack is listed as one of the leaders in France for folding and rigid boxes manufacturing in premium cardboard. Verpack supplies the most prestigious customers in the cosmetics, perfume, leather goods, spirits and luxury products industries. Relying on its four production facilities in France as well as a facility in Tunisia, the company has large printing and converting machines. It addresses the major subjects of social and environmental responsibility in order to support its customers in implementing more virtuous packaging. This approach is, moreover, in line with a fundamental trend which has seen numerous customers relocating their orders towards the group's facilities over the last few years, to benefit from outstanding innovations, service quality and response times.

" This operation heralds a new era for our group, an era of dynamic growth. It is the time for us to improve or expertises and to pool our resources to provide a Made in France production requested by our customers. Ethics, quality, safety and, of course, environment will, now more than ever, be key values ", explains Stéphane Viers.

Towards new positioning

With Crédit Mutuel Equity becoming a shareholder, this operation advised by Pax Corporate Finance aims at supporting the group in its growth and European deployment, and for future external growth operations. Verpack has indeed been principally built upon successive acquisitions, namely the buy-out of Cartonnages Guillaume (Paris Region) in 2000, of CLP Packaging (Burgundy Region) from the American group Chesapeake in 2006, and of Korus Packaging (Bordeaux) in 2013. The company does intend to continue in this direction with the support of its new shareholder. This operation also ends the shift, which was started by the group four years ago, to have a common brand and to lead its various plants to standardize their processes.

The operation is structured with a moderate debt, provided mainly by historical banks, co-arranged by BNP Paribas and Caisse d'Épargne Ile-de-France. Crédit du Nord and Société Générale also participate in the financing of the deal. A specific external growth line completes the financing to provide responsiveness in terms of acquisitions.

" We are proud to be working alongside this leading supplier of premium packaging in its management transition to support its development. We were impressed by its high-level industrial facilities located in France, by the pertinence of the business model and by its ongoing ability to innovate in order to support a portfolio of prestigious customers, while being a forerunner on CSR issues. The critical size of the group and its strong position on the market means it is ideally placed for the external growth operations that we wish to promote ", add Jean-Marie Giannettini and Jean-Baptiste Champeau, Principals at Crédit Mutuel Equity.

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