Just about a year ago, Morgan Stanley Capital Partners was part of a group that purchased PPC Flexible PackagingThen about six months later, the company added Packaging Products Corp. to the stable.
Now the two units are unifying under a single banner — PPC Flexible Packaging LLC — as the company looks for growth.
“We needed to rebrand the company into one entity. This is the perfect opportunity to do that with a story we can now take to the marketplace,” CEO Kevin Keneally said in a Feb. 26 interview.
“It’s rebranding under one refreshed brand. We’ll get our story out in front of our key customers and our developmental customers. It gives us an opportunity to tell what our capabilities are,” he said.
Morgan Stanley Capital Partners teamed up with Keneally and members of management early last year to purchase Fisher Container, which prints and converts pouches, bags and films in Buffalo Grove. The subsequent acquisition of Packaging Products added locations in Mission, Kan., and Rome, Ga.
Putting the words “flexible packaging” in the name is an important move, the CEO said.
“The name change is more representative of what we do. We’re a flexible packaging company. The prior names of the two firms really didn’t represent what we do. We’re a converter of printed, flexible packaging. So PPC Flexible Packaging just describes who we are and what we do,” Keneally said.
And armed with a new name, the company hopes to do more of what they already do in the months and years ahead.
“Now with our new platform identified underneath the name PPC Flexible Packaging, we’ll take the brand to market to talk to other companies about acquisitions. And as the acquisitions come, we’ll want to brand them under the new name,” he said.
“We’re taking a very aggressive position on acquisitions. And we do expect to add acquisitions this year. That will either be in the pouch making or other converted flexible rolled goods product areas,” Keneally said.
Organic growth — expansion by existing operations — also is part of the company’s strategy. “We see our markets as growing certainly better than GDP,” he said.
Re-branding the operations as PPC Flexible Packaging also allows the operations to highlight their two primary market segments: consumer packaging and precision clean packaging.
Consumer packaging includes the human and pet food markets, while the clean packaging division includes “health care, clean room, critical environment and microelectronic” applications, the company said.