Frank­furt a. Main — A Gleiss Lutz team advi­sed Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft AG (DBAG) on the finan­cing of the acqui­si­tion of Carton­plast Group (Carton­plast). In a lever­a­ged buyout, DBAG Fund VII, which is advi­sed by DBAG, has acqui­red the majo­rity of shares in Carton­plast from the London-based finan­cial inves­tor Stir­ling Square Capi­tal Part­ners.

Finan­cing was provi­ded through a so-called first out/last out unitran­che, supple­men­ted by a super senior opera­ting line of credit. With a total volume of appro­xi­m­ately EUR 200,000,000, the finan­cing repres­ents one of the largest unitran­che finan­cings in the German market.

DBAG Fund VII has been inves­t­ing in medium-sized compa­nies, prima­rily in German-spea­king count­ries, since Decem­ber 2016. Carton­plast is DBAG Fund VII’s eighth invest­ment in total and the third for which its top-up fund is also used.

Carton­plast was foun­ded in 1985. The company prima­rily rents reusable and recy­clable plas­tic liners for trans­port­ing glass bott­les, cans and other glass or PET contai­ners for food to the manu­fac­tu­r­ers of these contai­ners. In addi­tion to its head­quar­ters in Diet­zen­bach, Carton­plast has 16 other loca­ti­ons — abroad, espe­ci­ally in Western and Central Europe, Turkey,
Russia, Brazil and South Africa. In 2018, the company gene­ra­ted sales of around 80 million euros; around three quar­ters of this was attri­bu­ta­ble to the plas­tic layer pad rental business.

Advi­sor DBAG: Gleiss Lutz
Frank Schlo­b­ach (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner), Patrick Reuter, Dr. Jan-Alex­an­der Lange, Teresa
Bald­win (all Finance, Frankfurt).