Financier Paul Coulson's Ardagh Group is to acquire South African rival Consol in a deal valued at about $1 billion (€890m).
Headquartered in Johannesburg and founded in 1946, Consol operates four glass-production facilities. serving customers principally in the beer, wine, spirits, food and non-alcoholic beverage sectors. Consol reported consolidated revenues of ZAR9.0 billion (€504m).
Ardagh is to buy the company for an equity value of ZAR10.1 billion (€565.4m). It said it expects to finance the acquisition through a combination of its own cash resources and the assumption of ZAR5.7 billion (€318m) existing net debt at Consol.
The enterprise value of the transaction represents a multiple of approximately 6.6 times of annual adjusted earnings to the end of September.
"We are very pleased to expand our European and North America presence in glass packaging into Africa with the acquisition of Consol, a high-quality business led by an excellent management team. Consol is a market leader in the region, with great relationships across a diversified domestic and multinational customer base," said Mr Coulson, Ardagh's chairman.
Citigroup acted as exclusive financial adviser to Ardagh, and Barclays acted as exclusive financial adviser to Consol.
