According to press reports, packaging coatings has been separated from PPG Industries' industrial coatings unit as the company's 15th strategic business unit, reflecting PPG's emergence during 1997, largely through acquisitions, as a global, full-line supplier of specialzed coatings for all types of packaging. The company has quickly built a presence in the sector through a series of acquisitions in the last year or so. It swapped its surfactants business for BASF's packaging coatings business in November 1997 and more recently agreed to buy the packaging coatings operations of Courtaulds from Akzo Nobel, which was due to acquire Courtaulds. The addition of the Courtaulds operation will make PPG the second-largest worldwide producer of packaging coatings, behind Valspar.
