Lucca, Italy 03 February 2016 -- Who will become the new owner of corrugated packaging firm Ondulati Giusti? Sources say that Palm submitted a takeover offer. However, Italy's biggest packaging group Pro-Gest has a pre-emption right.

Italian manufacturer of corrugated board and packaging Ondulati Giusti may soon come under German ownership. According to a representative of Italian trade union Slc Cgil as well as several reports in the local media, German group Palm has made an offer to acquire the Italian company whose sites are currently leased to Italian packaging group Pro-Gest. Pro-Gest now has 60 days, i.e. until 19 March, to exercise its pre-emptive right and bid for Ondulati Giusti. Amidst the suspense on the market on how Pro-Gest would react, the company declined to make any comment on its future plans at the moment. Palm did not wish to comment on the status quo, either.

Pro-Gest leased the two plants of Ondulati Giusti in autumn 2014. However, the latter had to file for insolvency proceedings in November of the same year. According to a court document dated May 2015, Pro-Gest holds the pre-emptive right and has the option to buy the Ondulati Giusti site for €20m and the Cartonificio Fiorentino plant for €9m. How much higher Palm has bid, is not officially known.

According the Slc Cgil spokesman, Palm has made an offer to buy the Ondulati Giusti mill immediately and lease the Cartonificio Fiorentino site. However, Palm's offer includes a guarantee to acquire the latter site by October 2018 at the latest.

Ondulati Giusti's assets include the Ondulati Giusti sheeting plant in Altopascio near Lucca and the subsidiary and packaging facility Cartonificio Fiorentino near Florence. The Altopascio site has three corrugators with a total capacity of 500 million m², of which one is currently idle, according to the trade union spokesman. Cartonificio Fiorentino is an integrated packaging mill with one corrugator and several packaging lines with an estimated annual output of over 80 million m² of corrugated board and corrugated board packaging. The two sites together employ around 300 persons.