With its latest acquisition of VicWest’s (Oakville, Ontario / Canada; www.vicwest.com) Building Products division, Irish construction group Kingspan (Kingscourt; www.kingspan.com) continues to raise its activities in North America. The announcement of the roughly EUR 110m deal, which is subject to shareholder approval and expected to be completed in Q1 next year, follows Kingspan’s purchase earlier this month of Pactiv Corporation’s (Lake Forest, Illinois / USA; www.pactiv.com) Building Insulation division (see Plasteurope.com of 07.11.2014).

The business includes three insulated panel manufacturing plants as well as several profiling facilities in Canada and the US. Under the terms of the agreement, the existing management team will transfer to Kingspan, which has already announced its intention to make changes in the business that it expects will raise its annual pro forma EBITDA to about EUR 13m.

Commenting on the deal, Kingspan CEO Gene Murtagh said, “The acquisition of VicWest Building Products boosts Kingspan’s ability to drive conversion of the North American construction market to more energy-efficient insulated panels, coming at a time when the energy agenda in North America is becoming increasingly persuasive.”

In a separate deal, VicWest agreed to sell its remaining Westeel Agricultural Products division to Ag Growth International (Winnipeg, Manitoba / Canada; www.aggrowth.com).