During a series of interviews with paper industry sector chief executives this week at the Reuters Forest Forum, Swedish paper and hygiene products maker SCA's CEO Jan Johansson told Reuters that the company has a strong interest in expanding in Brazil and China.
Johansson said SCA, which unveiled this month the acquisition of a Turkish incontinence care firm, had room for more acquisitions and that the hygiene units were on the hunt."We are very interested in entering Brazil. And we are looking continuously in China, to see whether we can accelerate our presence there through any acquisitions," he said, adding that there were several interesting candidates in the two countries. SCA also remains keen on growing in the Middle East, despite recent unrest, he said.
Johansson dismissed persistent market talk that SCA might be mulling a sale of its packaging business as part of its strategy to focus on hygiene.
"No. We are exclusively working on improvement," he said. "The plan is to develop Packaging, to grow in the higher-margin segments, that is to say to focus more on consumer packaging."
The European packaging market does need to consolidate, but SCA's packaging unit has not been approached by potential buyers, Johansson said.