Plastics maker takes new listings to three

Friday 31st May 2002

Plastics packaging group Vertex will issue a prospectus for a public float next month as venture capitalists Pacific Equity Partners and Bain Capital sell down.

Vertex was originally known as Carter Holt Harvey Plastic Products and was sold by CHH to Bain, PEP and senior management in October 2000.

About 90% of its shares will be sold to investors but it has yet to be decided whether the company will issue new shares for the float.

The shares will be allocated to sharebrokers' clients and there will be no public pool.

Vertex employs 400 staff in four plants at Auckland's Albany, Hamilton, Hastings, Wellington and in Australia.

The chairman is PEP's managing director, Simon Pillar, who was also the chairman of Frucor Beverages before it was taken over last year by France's Danone.

Revenue has risen to $90 million, from $50 million in 1990 and $75 million when CHH sold out. Exports are worth about $15 million.

According to Companies Office documents Vertex's revenue for the half- year to March 2001 was $39 million but it posted a $2 million trading loss.

It was also highly geared, with liabilities of $62 million and equity of just $1 million.

It is New Zealand's largest supplier of injection-moulded dairy packaging and exports to Australia and the US.

It makes rigid containers for industrial, household, chemical and agricultural use and injection-moulded machine components for companies such as Fisher & Paykel healthcare and Fernz Health & Science.

Dairy foods clients include Tip Top, Talley's and New Zealand Dairy Foods.

It supplies Colgate-Palmolive with blow-moulded containers for household and personal care products and makes food trays for supermarkets such as Woolworths, Progressive Enterprises, and Foodstuffs.

Its "Securefresh" packaging for fresh chilled meat is used by meat exporters and it has the Australasian patents for a new long-life packaging system for chilled meat and other foods.

Managing director Paddy Boyle said the company was building its exports to Australia and the US.

The listing will be the third this year after Allied Farmers and Skellmax Industries.

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