O-I acquires two plants in northern China

Owens-Illinois has entered into an agreement to acquire the glass container manufacturing business of Hebei Rixin Glass Group Co Ltd in northern China.

The deal means O-I has more than doubled its capacity in China in the past year to more than one million tonnes (up from 440,000 tonnes), making the company China’s second largest glass container manufacturer.

The acquisition, located in the fast-growing Beijing/Tianjin region of China’s Hebei province, includes two plants and delivers an additional 270,000 tonnes of capacity for O-I.

The Hebei province is the third largest glass market in China and represents approximately 10 percent of the total Chinese market. The newly acquired plants produce glass containers predominantly for China’s rapidly growing domestic beer market. By 2015, China’s domestic beer market is expected to reach 573 m hectolitres, more than twice the size of the US beer market, which is the world’s second largest.