June 4: As leading Europe-based canmaker Impress celebrated the tenth anniversary of its formation with a conference and banquet in Italy last week, chief executive Francis Labbé (pictured above right) highlighted metal packaging’s strong sustainability credentials.
Formed in 1997 from the assets of Pechiney and Schmalbach-Lubeca with funding from private equity firm Doughty Hanson, Impress plans to continue developing in the growing markets of eastern Europe and Russia.
“Impress is ‘green and growing’,” Labbé told delegates from the Impress group, food companies and metal suppliers.
“We’re green because metal is a truly renewable material with the highest recycling rates and the strongest environmental credentials of all packaging materials.
“We’re growing, because in ten years we have gone from sales of 900 million euros to more than 1.6 billion euros today. We’ve done this mainly through focused acquisitions, but our highest priority is to get growth by rejuvenating the market and making metal more attractive to the final consumer.
