Orora Deals Display Wide-Format Allure

Mark Michelson, Editor-in-Chief, Printing Impressions

You’ve likely never heard of Melbourne, Australia-based Orora Ltd. On an acquisition tear to expand its point-of-purchase (POP) manufacturing footprint in North America, the $3 billion conglomerate recently signed definitive agreements without much fanfare to acquire Niles, Ill.-based The Garvey Group and Fullerton, Calif.-based Graphic Tech for a total of $54 million. Slated to close the end of this month, the acquisitions will further expand the publicly-held Australian company’s footprint in the Midwest and West Coast.

These most recent U.S. M&A deals come on the heels of Orora’s purchase of IntegraColor, a Mesquite, Texas-based POP, merchandising materials and visual communications provider, for $77 million in March 2016, followed by the acquisition of The Register Print Group, a Clifton, N.J., provider of POP retail displays, long-run litho labels and packaging, for $44 million in January. Existing management and employee bases are largely remaining in place at the four acquired companies.

Once fully integrated, Orora will have assembled a national POP manufacturing and fulfillment footprint with revenues of approximately $230 million to serve clientele within the industrial, food, warehousing and shipping, technology and healthcare industries.

It’s not the company’s first foray into North America, however. Orora already operates more than 75 North American locations, generating approximately $1.2 billion in revenue on this continent alone. Globally, Orora operates 40+ manufacturing plants and 87 distribution centers across seven countries, and employs 6,200 workers.

The company primarily supplies packaging and related services to the grocery, consumer goods and industrial markets. This includes the design and manufacture of packaging products such as glass bottles, beverage cans, corrugated boxes, recycled paper, folding cartons, multi-wall paper bags and POP displays.

As Orora’s huge investment to build a national U.S. network attests, POP/POS displays, including backlit signage, window graphics, and wall and floor graphics; digital packaging; as well as textile/dye sublimation printing for the signage, trade show and interior décor markets, represent high-growth, high-margin markets for commercial printers.

Be sure to check out our coverage in this issue that discusses the market opportunities and robust industry growth projections being forecast for both wide-format inkjet and production inkjet printing. Consider them as possible ways to break out of the commodity trap.