In a deal believed to be worth about EUR 15m, French recycling specialist Paprec (La Courneuve; www.paprec.com) has acquired compatriot Matières Plastiques de Bourgogne (MPB, La Loyère), a recycler of post-consumer HDPE bottles and containers and manufacturer of HDPE corrugated pipe, among other products. The company with 45 employees and EUR 15m in annual revenue was divested by Italian corrugated pipe manufacturer Polieco (Cazzago S. Martino; www.polieco.com), which regards itself as Europe’s largest player in the field.

With the acquisition, Paprec’s plastics division, Paprec Plastique, will further expand its presence in the recycling sector, where it already claims to be France’s leading player, with sales of EUR 120m in 2012 from processing 250,000 t/y of plastics waste at eight facilities across France. The company specialises in PVC, ABS, PE and PP.

In 2008, Paprec, which has total sales of EUR 750m, founded a PET recycling joint venture with Sita (Nanterre / France; www.sita.fr). The company, France Plastiques Recyclage (FPR, Limay), operates a processing plant for 40,000 t/y of post-consumer bottles annually – see Plasteurope.com of 09.07.2009.

In future, Polieco plans to concentrate on large-format corrugated pipe for drainage and cable sheating applications. The Italian company with EUR 100m in annual sales in 2012 employs 400 people in seven European plants, including two in Italy, two in France and one each in Greece, Spain and Slovakia. Its processing capacity for polyolefins is estimated at around 90,000 t/y.