Growing demand from online shopping as well as reliable cash flows from the plastic packaging sector has since long been a point of interest for private equity.

As per a report from the Wall Street Journal, private equity firm Apollo Global Management is in advanced talks to acquire the RPC Group, Europe’s biggest plastics packaging maker, for more than $3.8 billion.

Last Friday, RPC had extended the deadline to January 23 to enable Apollo to either make a firm offer or walk away from the deal.

A formal announcement could potentially be announced later today.

Private equity has long been attracted to the sector’s reliable cash flow and growing demand from online shopping, with a spate of takeovers by bigger packaging players further spurring their interest.

As of yesterday, RPC, which operates in 34 countries, had a market capitalization of $4.2 billion (3.26 billion pounds).

In September 2018, RPC had said it was in talks to potential divest itself to Apollo and U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital.

In December, RPC ended its talks with Bain.

RPC declined to comment.

Apollo could not be reached for comment outside normal business hours.

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