Plastics & Rubber World - July/August 2019 - 14

NEWS

BUSINESS

Spectrum Plastics acquires Irish
plastics firm Earnán Biomedical
Alpharetta, GA - Spectrum
Plastics Group, a US-based
medical component manufacturer, has announced the acquisition of Earnán Biomedical.
Earnán Biomedical, a specialist in medical balloon technologies, is located in Wexford.
The purchase follows a joint
marketing agreement made
earlier this year between the
two companies for Spectrum to
oﬀer 'oﬀ the shelf' products, including percutaneous transluminal angioplasty catheters.
Spectrum will continue to
market the balloon products,
which are made from nylon,
polyurethane and polyester,
under the Earnán brand. The

Cleanroom manufacturing at Spectrum Plastics Group
Irish company will become part
of Spectrum Plastics' Vascular
Technologies division.

Colin Sutherland, CEO of
Earnán Biomedical, will serve
as VP of Balloon Technologies

and remain as director of the
Wexford site. Terms of the deal
were not disclosed.

RECYCLING

Ireland surpasses recycling targets set by EU

Dublin, Ireland - Repak, the
Irish packaging and recycling
compliance scheme, has reported that Ireland has achieved
an average 68% recycling rate
across all materials. This is the
country's highest ever total, exceeding EU targets by 13%.
Top performers were glass
(86%, EU target: 60%) and
paper (78%, 68%). Plastic returned a recycling total of 33%
(22.5%).
Repak made the announcement at the release of its annual report for 2018.
Total tonnage of recovered and recycled packaging

Green bin collection - 2018 was the 21st successive year
Ireland has exceeded EU recycling targets

reached 904,000 tonnes, with
plastic waste recovery increasing 35.7% to 267,000 tonnes.
Séamus Clancy, Repak chief
executive, said the 10.5% increase over recycling ﬁgures
for 2017 was something to
be proud of, adding: "A major
eﬀort across all parts of society will be needed to increase
our plastic recycling to achieve
highly challenging future EU
targets."
Ireland is currently the
third-highest plastic recycler in
Europe, but totals will have to
double to achieve the 55% target set for 2030.

BUSINESS

Amcor to sell three former Bemis plants for £311m
Bristol, UK - Amcor has
agreed to sell three former
Bemis Company production
plants in Ireland and the UK to
US-based private equity ﬁrm
Kohlberg & Co. for £311m.
The divestment was required by the European Commission, which granted conditional approval of Amcor's

WWW.PRW.COM | JULY/AUGUST 2019

£4.57bn purchase of Wisconsin-based Bemis in February
this year.
The three plants, in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Clara,
in Co. Oﬀaly, RoI, and Brigg, Lincolnshire, are said to represent
'the entire medical packaging
business' of Bemis. The plants
have combined annual sales

of around £118m.
There were multiple bidders
for the three plants. Commenting on the deal, Peter Schmitt,
MD of Montesino Associates in
Wilmington, Delaware, said: "It
looks like Kohlberg is making
a huge play into medical and
wants to become a major new
player."

Amcor, which is based in
Melbourne, Australia and has
UK oﬃces in Bristol, completed
the all-stock acquisition of Bemis on 11 June.

* Shahrzad Pourriahi, Plastics
News Europe, and Frank Esposito, Plastics News, contributed to this report.

http://WWW.PRW.COM

Plastics & Rubber World - July/August 2019

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