Aventas consider sale of packaging business

The former Quinn Group, now rebranded Aventas, is considering an offer to sell off the packaging side to the business.
The news comes only days after company property has been actively targeted and destroyed, and mere weeks following an approach by a group investors made up of former management with a view to buying the company outright.
The “expression of interest” in the Quinn Packaging side to the Aventas Group was made known last Wednesday with the board, the Celt has been told, deciding to “run a process to establish the extent of such interest”.
No indication as to who or from where this expression of interest has come from has been revealed, and though it is being actively considered, the company warns “this process may or may not lead to a sale of Quinn Packaging”.
If Aventas were to sell, it would be the third sale of a major former Quinn asset in as many months, having last month confirmed signing an agreement to sell its roof-tile business to rival Lagan Cement Products and the Quinn transport fleet to a Dutch company, CEVA Logistics.
Last week also accounted for the fourth and fifth attack on since December on the property part of the empire once owned by local businessman Sean Quinn.
A tarmac spreader was destroyed by fire on Dernawilt Road in Donagh, Fermanagh on Thursday evening, and this was preceded a day earlier by a generator being set alight near the building of the former Quinn Glass plant in Derrylin.
No one is believed to have been injured during either incident and police are continuing their investigations.
Mr Quinn lost control of his firms in 2011 as part of his legal battle with former Anglo Irish Bank, the now liquidated IBRC.
Quinn’s radiator, glass and cement manufacturing facilities have recently been renamed under the Aventas brand.
Trade union Unite meanwhile have met members of a local consortium, called the Quinn Business Retention Group, hoping to acquire the Aventas Group, and have given them their backing.
The local group is made up of three local businessmen including John McCartin, a Fine Gael councillor, and eight former Quinn Group executives, including Liam McCaffrey, its former chief executive.
In a statement Eugene McGlone of Unite, said he “believed that the union and the consortium could do business together for the benefit of the workers in the Quinn Group and the local economy.”
Aventas has though asked QBRC to show it how it intends to finance any bid for the group before entering any detailed discussions are to take place.