Oak Creek-based Seville Flexpack Corp. has been sold to German firm Südpack.
The transaction closed today for an undisclosed price, according to Tammie Miller and Erik Eidem of Milwaukee investment bank TKO Miller, who advised Seville in the deal.
“We see a lot of international buyers pursuing American companies, and this is certainly one,” Eidem said.
Seville Flexpack has two adjoining facilities totaling 156,000 square feet in Oak Creek, which will be Südpack’s first U.S. manufacturing plants. The German firm has 35 global sales offices and production facilities in Germany, France, Poland and Switzerland.
“What was interesting to them was No. 1, they wanted to build on their North American presence and primarily they wanted to focus on cheese and meat packaging,” Eidem said. “They felt that Wisconsin was perfect for that.”
Südpack was also interested in Seville’s rotogravure printing capability. Seville makes flexible packaging for the food, beverages, pharmaceutical, medical supplies, personal products and confectionary markets. In addition to rotogravure, it can provide flexographic printing, solvent-free laminations, registered cold seal, registered pattern heat seal coatings, single and multi-ply laminations and pouch fabrication.
Both Seville facilities will remain open in the integration and all 40 of its employees will remain onboard, Miller said.
“They are going to put additional money and effort into growing the business,” Eidem said. “The plant was not operating at capacity and I think Südpack feels they can pretty swiftly bring capacity into the plant, both ensuring jobs and growth in Wisconsin.”
Seville has been for sale since February through a legal settlement agreement with the children and beneficiaries of Walter Yakich, who founded the company in 1978 and died in June 2014. The assets of his trust have been in probate since, but now are being monetized and distributed to his beneficiaries by the court.
