Funds advised by CVC Asia Pacific Limited (‘CVC’) have sold GS Paper and Packaging (‘GSPP’) to Oji Paper Co., Ltd. (‘Oji’) of Japan. This represents the largest and most successful private equity exits in Malaysia and one of the most successful in Southeast Asia.
GSPP was founded in 1992 and was acquired by funds advised by CVC and management in 2007. It is the largest industrial brown paper and corrugated box manufacturer in Malaysia and the only company in Malaysia that offers a full range of industrial brown paper products including recycled linerboard, corrugating medium and test liner. GSPP is the clear market leader in market share, scale, production technology, and product quality and design. Its two state-of-the-art paper mills have 270,000 metric tons/year capacity; its two corrugated box plants have corrugating capacity of 156,000 metric tons/year and converting capacity of 132,000 metric tons/year. GSPP sells industrial brown paper to almost all of Malaysia’s corrugated box manufacturers and provides corrugated boxes to a range of customers in the electronics, consumer goods, food and beverage sectors for export and domestic markets.
Mark Oughton, CEO of GSPP, said, “It has been a pleasure working together with CVC for the past three years as we achieved our business plan and transformed GSPP into a stronger company. We look forward to continuing to work on our long term growth and development as part of Oji Paper Group.”
Brian Hong, Managing Director of CVC, commented, “The management team has done an outstanding job and has been a superb partner throughout our investment period. We believe they will continue to deliver superior performance and realise further growth potential with Oji.” CVC was advised by JPMorgan. Oji was advised by Macquarie Capital Advisors.