Berry Plastics

Berry Plastics is a global manufacturer and marketer of plastic packaging products. Headquartered in Evansville, Indiana, the company operates over 99 global manufacturing facilities and employs over 25,000 individuals by the end of financial Year 2012. Following its 2015 acquisition of AVINTIV, its annual sales will exceed $7.2 billion, placing it in the Fortune 500 and making it one of the largest plastics packaging producers in the world. Having acquired more than 30 businesses since 1988, Berry Plastics is one of the most active acquirers of plastic packaging businesses globally.

Since September 2006 the company has been owned by Apollo Management, L.P. and Graham Partners. The management team of Berry Plastics also owns a significant portion of the business. In March 2012, Berry Plastics filed with the SEC to raise up to $500 million in an initial public offering.

History

Berry Plastics was originally established in 1967 as Imperial Plastics. In recent years, Berry Plastics has completed several acquisitions including Mammoth Containers, Sterling Products, Tri-Plas, Alpha Products, PackerWare, Venture Packaging, Virginia Design Packaging, Container Industries, Knight Engineering and Plastics, Cardinal Packaging, Poly-Seal, Landis Plastics, Euromex Plastics S.A. de C.V., Kerr Group, Covalence Specialty Materials (the former Tyco Plastics & Adhesives business), Rollpak, Captive Plastics, and MAC Closures. The most recent acquisitions include Superfos and the Pliant Corporation.

Berry

In everyday language, a berry is a small, pulpy and often edible fruit. Berries are usually juicy, rounded, brightly colored, sweet or sour, and do not have a stone or pit, although many pips or seeds may be present. Common examples are strawberries, raspberries, blueberries; and red- and blackcurrants. In Britain soft fruit is a horticultural term for such fruits.

The scientific usage of the term berry differs from common usage. In scientific terminology, a berry is a fruit produced from the ovary of a single flower in which the outer layer of the ovary wall develops into an edible fleshy portion (botanically the pericarp). The definition includes many fruits that are not commonly known as berries, such as grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants (aubergines), avocados and bananas. Fruits excluded by the botanical definition include strawberries and raspberries. A plant bearing berries is said to be bacciferous or baccate.

Many berries are edible, but some are poisonous to humans, such as the fruits of the potato, the deadly nightshade and pokeweed can cause harm. Others, such as the white, red mulberry, and elderberry are poisonous when unripe, but are edible in their ripe form.

Plastic

Generic term used in the case of polymeric material that may contain other substances
to improve performance and/or reduce costs.

Note 1: The use of this term instead of polymer is a source of confusion and thus is
not recommended.

Note 2: This term is used in polymer engineering for materials often compounded that
can be processed by flow.

Plastic is a material consisting of any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organics that are malleable and can be molded into solid objects of diverse shapes. Plastics are typically organic polymers of high molecular mass, but they often contain other substances. They are usually synthetic, most commonly derived from petrochemicals, but many are partially natural.Plasticity is the general property of all materials that are able to irreversibly deform without breaking, but this occurs to such a degree with this class of moldable polymers that their name is an emphasis on this ability.

Due to their relatively low cost, ease of manufacture, versatility, and imperviousness to water, plastics are used in an enormous and expanding range of products, from paper clips to spaceships. They have already displaced many traditional materials, such as wood, stone, horn and bone, leather, paper, metal, glass, and ceramic, in most of their former uses. In developed countries, about a third of plastic is used in packaging and another third in buildings such as piping used in plumbing or vinyl siding. Other uses include automobiles (up to 20% plastic), furniture, and toys. In the developing world, the ratios may be different - for example, reportedly 42% of India's consumption is used in packaging. Plastics have many uses in the medical field as well, to include polymer implants, however the field of plastic surgery is not named for use of plastic material, but rather the more generic meaning of the word plasticity in regards to the reshaping of flesh.