IPL Plastics, formerly One51, hires three Canadian banks for flotation

Dublin-based IPL Plastics, the former investment group known as One51 which has about 2,000 shareholders in Ireland, has hired three Canadian investment banks to help it prepare for an initial public offering (IPO) as soon the middle of this year.

IPL Plastics, led by chief executive Alan Walsh, has retained the services of Canada Bank of Montreal unit BMO Capital Markets, CIBC and Royal Bank of Canada's capital markets division to help manage the process, The Irish Times has learned. A spokesman for the company declined to comment.

It comes four months after the company ended takeover talks with UK private equity firm CapVest without agreement, allowing it to forge ahead with plans to float in Toronto and possibly in Dublin.

Set up in 2005 as an investment business spun out of food and agri group IAWS (now Aryzta), One51 initially held a diverse range of assets from a 26 per cent stake in infrastructure company to Irish Pride Bakers.

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Mr Walsh has spent more than six years unravelling the group’s collection of disparate investments, including a major stake in ferries operator Irish Continental Group, to turn it into a focused rigid plastics company which makes everything from yoghurt pots to refuse bins.

Shareholder approval

IPL Plastics received approval from shareholders in December to proceed with a name change and corporate restructuring that would allow two Canadian firms, Quebec-based Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec(CDPQ) and Fonds de Solidarité, to swap their 33 per cent stake in the main division of the company, IPL Inc, for a direct stake in the parent company.

It would see the two firms holding a combined 41.5 per cent stake in IPL Plastics before an IPO.

IPL is scheduled to unveil full-year results on Friday. It said in December that its North American business, IPL Inc, which accounts for 75 per cent of group sales was performing “strongly”, driven by demand for its products in the US and Canada as well as the acquisition of a business last June.

However, the company said at the time that the performance of OnePlastics unit, which operates in Ireland, Britain and China, was “mixed”. Still, it said that the UK operation was doing better in 2017 than the previous year when currency fluctuations were stripped out, notwithstanding the country’s ongoing political and economic uncertainties.