9th September, 2013

DS Smith Tri-Wall Division – Transfer of ownership

On December 5^th, 2012, following lengthy negotiations and weeks of preparation, Tri-Wall Limited (Tri-Wall Group corporate headquarters in Hong Kong) reached an agreement with DS Smith Packaging Limited (No. 2 in the European packaging market behind Smurfit-Kappa) to acquire DS Smith Tri-Wall division (DS Smith’s Tri-Wall UK/Europe, comprised of the Tri-Wall corrugating plant located in Monmouth, United Kingdom, and the Tri-Wall Europe sales office located in Rijswijk, Netherlands).

DS Smith Tri-Wall has been a wholly owned subsidiary of DS Smith Packaging since 1990, when Weyerhaeuser divested its share in all of the international Tri-Wall joint-ventures, retaining only the US Tri-Wall operations (subsequently Weyerhaeuser’s corrugated board and container board divisions were acquired by International Paper in 2008. Because of this, currently the right of trademark of Tri-Wall and its businesses are owned by International Paper since then). Due to EU anti-monopoly regulatory concerns, DS Smith was obliged to divest its Tri-Wall UK/Europe operations following the acquisition of Swedish based SCA Packaging earlier this year. Although TWL’s acquisition of DS Smith Tri-Wall is subject to final approval by the European Commission (to be decided at a formal hearing in mid-January of 2013), the Tri-Wall Limited acquisition team is confident that this final hurdle will be cleared successfully. After receiving EU approval, the company will be renamed “Tri-Wall Europe Limited”.

Acquisition of DS Smith Tri-Wall gives the Asia based Tri-Wall Group a robust production facility in the UK (a 17,200m2 site that includes highly skilled management and production staff, a triple-wall corrugating factory, heavy-duty/specialty converting equipment, and industry leading on-site testing laboratory) as well as a talented, multi-lingual sales and customer-service team based in the Netherlands. In addition to expanding its European presence and helping to realize synergies between Europe and Asia, the acquisition will allow the Tri-Wall Group to offer seamless, global service across Asia and Europe, and to more effectively pursue expansion plans in Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and even India.

We are extremely pleased to welcome the talented group of people at Tri-Wall UK/Europe into our Tri-Wall family, and look forward to working closely with them in the coming years as we continue to expand and solidify Tri-Wall’s global presence and capabilities.