Dive Brief:
- Ball has entered agreements to acquire a majority stake in China-based beverage can manufacturer Benepack. The deal will include Benepack’s two European production sites: one in Belgium and another in Hungary.
- Ball intends to buy an 80% stake worth about 184 million euros ($215.9 million), while existing Benepack shareholders will retain the remaining 20%.
- The company says all regulatory considerations already have cleared, and it expects the deal to close in the first quarter of 2026.
Dive Insight:
Benepack has been in Europe since 2020 when its first plant opened in Belgium, and the plant in Hungary followed in 2023. Germany’s federal cartel office, the Bundeskartellamt, yesterday gave the OK for the Ball deal to progress. It noted that Benepack has a “limited market presence” in Europe, and the transaction “did not raise any serious competition concerns” about strengthening Ball’s presence in Europe. “Even after the merger, customers will have several competing suppliers to choose from,” the agency wrote.
The Bundeskartellamt’s investigation found any effects of this deal would be constrained to suppliers and customers in western Germany and the neighboring Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) because “high transport costs restrict the area which can be supplied competitively from a specific manufacturing site.” Luxembourg-based Ardagh Group is the main competitor affected, due to nearby sites it acquired from London-based Rexam Ltd. in 2016; Rexam’s divestitures were required at that time as part of European Commission requirements for approval of its acquisition by Ball. Rexam is a subsidiary of Benepack, the Bundeskartellamt says.
This year Ball started up lines in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, with plans for further European expansion through 2028. However, it does not yet have locations in Belgium or Hungary, pointed out Michael Roxland, senior paper and packaging analyst at Truist Securities, in a Dec. 10 memo to investors. The Benepack acquisition would bolster Ball’s presence in Eastern Europe while offering further opportunities for growth, he said.
Ball has undertaken a string of M&A activities over the last two years that reshaped its business. Most notably, it divested its aerospace business to BAE systems for $5.6 billion in February 2024. That divestiture transitioned Ball into a pure-play packaging company.
In February 2025, the company acquired Florida Can Manufacturing for $160 million. In March, Ball announced that it would sell a majority stake in its aluminum cups segment and form a joint venture, Oasis Venture Holdings, for that business with Ayna.AI, an industrial technology advisory and implementation firm.
Also this year, Ball completed its partial sale of ownership of Ball United Arab Can Manufacturing Co., its consolidated joint venture in Saudi Arabia, reducing its stake to 10%. In September, Red Bull broke ground on a new $1.7 billion manufacturing and distribution facility in Concord, North Carolina, that is a joint project with supplier Ball and Austrian beverage company Rauch Fruchtsäfte.
Ball also has made changes to its C-suite this year. Last month, the company announced CEO Dan Fisher would depart immediately and be replaced by Ronald Lewis, who was Ball’s chief supply chain and operations officer. At that time, the company also announced that Daniel Rabbitt would be the permanent CFO; he took on the interim role following the May announcement that CFO Howard Yu would step down after less than two years in the position.
