Graeme Hart. Photo / Martin Sykes
Billionaire Graeme Hart has refinanced $3.5 billion in debt and is looking to expand his global packaging business.
New Zealand's richest man has indicated he may be interested in Rio Tinto's Alcan Packaging assets.
"I'd be better not to comment but you can be very confident I'm always watching the
market for acquisitions," Hart told the Australian Financial Review.
"Public or private, there's never any merit discussing in a newspaper what you're looking at buying or selling. But there's a lot going on; it's great."
Hart, who has spent around $12 billion on expanding his packaging business in Australia, the United States, New Zealand and Europe in the past three years, said it would be difficult to get the timing of acquisitions right in the current volatile markets.
"These are markets that present opportunities but you have to be cautious about exactly which ones you take and when you take them," he told the newspaper.
"If this market remains difficult for a number of years you may not want to move too early. On the other hand, if you don't move it turns up and you haven't secured the asset you want."
Since 2006, Hart has bought Carter Holt Harvey, Switzerland's SIG Holdings, Alcoa's packaging and consumer division, International Paper's beverage packaging unit and US drink carton maker Blue Ridge Paper Products.
His private company, Rank Group, is the second-largest beverage packaging producer after Tetrapak.
Hart confirmed that his packaging operations were not immune to the downturn. "We've seen volumes come off," he told the newspaper. "I don't know whether it's directly correlated to the consumption stats that the major beverage companies put out, because there's always a bit of inventory that gets in the way.
"But we're going to be the same as every other packaging company that's in the business of producing for beverages. The nice thing is that people don't stop drinking, so packaging is a relatively defensive, resilient business to be in, but it's not immune."
