While the Spanish plant was not affected by the insolvency proceedings of the British subsidiaries of its parent company Arjowiggins, the Catalan site is taken over by Fedrigoni. The agreement was signed a few days after the British subsidiaries of the Arjowiggins group went into administration, says the Italian paper manufacturer with 4,500 employees.
Based in Gelida near Barcelona, the Guarro Casas mill, founded in 1698, specializes in the production of high quality fine papers, mainly for bookbinding and creative applications.
The paper mill, which employs 140 people, is a market leader in paper finishing for luxury packaging, book covers and security applications.
Fedrigoni, which already has a strong presence in the luxury packaging paper market, believes it can develop synergies by leveraging the Spanish paper mill's expertise and loyal customer base.
Marco Nespolo, CEO of Fedrigoni Group, states: "The acquisition of Guarro Casas opens a new chapter in our international growth strategy in specialty papers for premium packaging and other creative applications. It will enable us to serve all brands, designers, printers and converters even more effectively. This new entity in our group will expand our portfolio with additional know-how and technologies that are fully complementary to our own."
It was on September 22 that the 10 UK subsidiaries of the Arjowiggins group have entered insolvency proceedings . These include two paper manufacturing sites: the Scottish graphic and packaging paper mill at Stoneywood and the English tracing and innovative paper mill at Chartham.
Since then, the court-appointed administrators, who have had to lay off almost all the employees, have been looking for new ways to new owners for these two sites, paper manufacturers or not .
Until now, official communications from the administrators have been limited to pointing out that the Spanish Guarro Casas plant and the ArjoWiggins Quzhou plant in China were not affected by the insolvency proceedings.
