Niche fibre and plastic products manufacturer Filtrona (Milton Keynes / UK; www.filtrona.com) is to sell its Brazilian consumer packaging business Globalpack (www.globalpack.com.br) to Brazil’s Itavema Group (www.itavema.com.br) for USD 56m. The company said that it expects an adverse impact of about GBP 2m (EUR 2.97m) on its operating profit at the half-year stage due to currency translation effects, particularly the movement of the US dollar.

It plans to use the net proceeds from the sale to repay debt and the disposal will allow it to focus on the growth of its core international businesses in plastic – profiles and sheets – and fibre technologies. Globalpack reported pretax profits of GBP 2.1m in 2006. Gross assets were GBP 23.5m.