Target Report: Industry Transformation

Transformation Versus Convergence

For much of the past decade, transformation has been framed as a destination: printers becoming packagers, converters becoming platforms, legacy printing businesses adding promotional products and other services to become one-stop shops. December 2025 suggested something more sobering and more demanding, as illustrated by two very different reciprocal strategic moves. Transformation, as illustrated by two transactions announced during the month, has become a continuous process, one that requires companies not only to enter new markets but to know when to turn sideways or exit them as well.

ProAmpac, the PE-backed, financially engineered consolidation vehicle focused initially solely on flexible packaging manufacturers, announced the acquisition of TC Transcontinental Packaging. This transaction does not merely shift ownership of assets; it marks a major inflection point not only in the corporate strategic arc of ProAmpac but also in that of the acquired division’s corporate parent, TC Transcontinental.

ProAmpac: From Aggregation to Leadership

ProAmpac’s origins are familiar to anyone who has followed private equity in packaging over the last fifteen years. ProAmpac was engineered from inception to be acquisitive. Its earliest iteration was not simply as a company, but a strategy, a disciplined roll-up, assembling a portfolio of flexible packaging converters with complementary footprints and customer bases. In its early years, the approach was straightforward: consolidate the fragmented, but growing, flexible packaging business.

What distinguished ProAmpac over time was its refusal to remain in that lane. In 2016, Wellspring Capital, the company’s initial PE sponsor, handed off the ProAmpac platform to Chicago-based Pritzker Private Capital (PPC), which reset the capital base and enabled the next decade of oftentimes frenzied acquisition activity.

One of those acquisitions was the purchase of the Rosenbloom Group, a Canadian company that manufactures bags, including plain brown bags, printed and branded grocery bags, bread bags, grease-resistant bags for French fries and donuts, fast-food takeout bags, and wine bottle bags. Millions and millions of paper-based bags - unpretentious, simple bags. This was a notable departure from the company’s positioning as a leading-edge producer of flexible packaging and pouches. This was the moment ProAmpac shifted from seeking market density to optimizing for market breadth. With this transaction, ProAmpac began diversifying and expanding its product offerings, marking the start of a strategy to acquire companies with a broader range of packaging products to serve its current and new markets (see The Target Report: Bags, Pouches, Trays & Bowls – December 2020).

The dealmakers at ProAmpac completed no less than ten acquisitions in 2021. In addition to expanding its product line to include paper bags, ProAmpac expanded vertically into its supply chain with the acquisition of APC Paper Group in Claremont, New Hampshire. The acquired company manufactures 100% recycled kraft-grade paper products, a key component in the previously acquired bag manufacturing companies.

Paper was not the only vertical integration move. Earlier that year, ProAmpac completed two other acquisitions that also moved the company vertically within its supply chain, purchasing IG Industries and Brayford Plastics, both UK-based manufacturers of plastic films used in bag and flexible packaging production. This vertical integration represented a fairly dramatic departure from the basic roll-up strategy. (See The Target Report: Packaging Industry Consolidation in Every Direction – July 2021.)

Additional acquisitions continued subsequent to the 2021 watershed period, further diversifying the company geographically, expanding the markets served, and introducing new product types. No longer simply a roll-up of flexible packaging companies based on plastic substrates, ProAmpac had transitioned to include a multitude of fiber-based packaging companies, including the acquisition of three kraft-paper mills. This shift to paper products was further enhanced and publicized with the early 2025 rollout of the company’s branding initiative, “Fiberization of Packaging.”

In August 2025, ProAmpac acquired PAC Worldwide. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, the acquired company specializes in protective mailers and specialty packaging for e‑commerce, courier, and retail applications. Despite the rather plain brown-paper nature of many of PAC’s mailers, the acquisition was framed positively within the broader strategic shift away from ProAmpac’s earlier positioning as a roll-up of flexible packaging companies. According to Greg Tucker, Founder, Vice Chairman, and CEO of ProAmpac, in the press release about the deal, “This is a transformational moment for our companies; we are creating unmatched packaging capabilities.” Another move to increase its fiber-based packaging capacity came in October 2025, when ProAmpac announced it had purchased International Paper's bag-converting operations.

In the waning days of 2025, ProAmpac announced the blockbuster acquisition of the TC Transcontinental Packaging division (“TCP”) from its Canadian parent company, TC Transcontinental. ProAmpac is paying approximately US $1.51 billion for TCP, representing a multiple of approximately 9 times EBITDA, calculated exclusive of operating leases. The TCP acquisition adds advanced capabilities in the dairy, meat, medical, and pharmaceutical end markets, as well as manufacturing sites in North America, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.

As the flexible packaging sector has matured and simple multiple arbitrage (i.e., a larger company commands higher enterprise purchase multiples) has become harder to achieve, ProAmpac has begun shifting its acquisition strategy toward technology and capabilities. Barrier films, sustainable materials (fiber-based), advanced laminations, and specialized end-market solutions increasingly defined the deal rationale. The acquisition of TC Transcontinental Packaging represents the culmination of that evolution. This was not a tuck-in, nor a technology add-on. It was the absorption of a scaled, global packaging platform carved out of a diversified public company. For ProAmpac, this was, as stated in the press release, “a transformative milestone for both companies.”

TC Transcontinental: Reinvention, Repeated

If ProAmpac’s story is one of gradual evolution, TC Transcontinental’s is one of deliberate reinvention — not once, but multiple times.

For much of its history, TC Transcontinental (“TC”) was synonymous with newspaper and publication printing. At its peak, it was one of North America’s largest printers of newspapers, magazines, and retail flyers, benefiting from scale in a market that rewarded volume, logistics expertise, and long-term contracts. When that market began its secular decline, many peers hesitated, hoping the erosion would slow or reverse. TC Transcontinental did not wait.

In a decision we examined extensively in earlier Target Reports after it was first announced, TC Transcontinental chose to pivot away from its legacy identity. Given the headwinds facing the newspaper and magazine segments, company management made the strategic decision to change course. Packaging, particularly flexible packaging, was identified as a growth engine capable of offsetting the structural decline in print.

At the outset of this strategy in March 2014, when TC acquired its first flexible packaging company, François Olivier, TC's President and CEO at the time, stated that the deal was the first indication of the company’s new strategic plan to grow through diversification. He added that flexible packaging was a natural fit, given that the production process was similar to their current operations, which run roll-fed substrates, and the market offered growth opportunities.

By November 2017, the company had announced its fifth deal in the flexible packaging segment. Lest there be any lack of clarity as to the company’s strategic direction, Isabell Marcoux, Chair of the Board of TC, reiterated in the 2016 annual report that TC’s vision includes “transforming the organization to be a North American leader in flexible packaging.”

In our opinion, expressed at the time, the transformation of TC was possibly the best example of a planned, disciplined, articulate and well-executed strategy that utilized a company’s existing financial strength gained from its traditional foundation, in this case printing newspapers and magazines, to build out an entirely new expertise in a much more desirable (and likely sustainable over the long term) segment of the printing industry. (See The Target Report: Flexible Packaging is Hot – November 2017.)

By 2018, a visitor to TC Transcontinental’s website was greeted with the opening line, “TC Transcontinental is a leader in flexible packaging in North America …” That was a bold statement from a company that had managed to transform itself in just four years from primarily a publication and commercial printer, with no packaging experience, to become a powerhouse in the flexible packaging segment. Upon the acquisition of Coveris Americas, a billion-dollar flexible packaging printing company, the company reported that on a going-forward basis, packaging would represent 48% of the company’s revenue, more than any of the company’s traditional service segments, such as retail-related services (27%), Newspapers (7%), or magazines and books (7%). (See The Target Report: Getting Flexible in Your Middle Years - April 2018.)

When first announced, TC Transcontinental’s move into packaging was a bold bet, trading the certainty of a declining legacy business for the uncertainty of a highly competitive growth market in which valuations were soaring. In hindsight, it was prescient. Packaging did not merely replace lost print revenue; it reshaped the company’s narrative and stabilized its future. TC Transcontinental’s move remains a model for how a legacy graphic communications company can successfully reinvent itself.

From an M&A perspective, the company has remained laser-focused on implementing this strategy. Capital was redeployed. Acquisitions were made. Capabilities were built. Over time, TC Transcontinental Packaging became a credible, scaled player in its own right within the flexible packaging segment. That is, up to now.

December 2025 marks the second act in this story and, at first glance, perhaps the more challenging to understand. Having built a meaningful packaging business, TC Transcontinental chose to sell it. To casual observers, this might appear to be a retreat. In reality, it likely reflects a deeper strategic discipline: management believes the flexible packaging market is mature, the division has reached peak valuation, and there is little marginal benefit from additional scale.

The sale of TC Transcontinental Packaging to ProAmpac is not an abandonment of transformation, but its continuation. Having proven it could enter, scale, and professionalize a packaging platform, the company is now choosing to exit at a moment of strength, as evidenced by the multiple achieved. The majority of the capital unlocked by the sale of TCP is being distributed to the shareholders, with the balance retained and redirected toward retail services and educational publishing — areas where TC now believes its operational DNA, customer relationships, and risk tolerance are better aligned for the long term.

This is not diversification for its own sake. It is portfolio management at the corporate level, informed by a sober assessment of where durable value can be created. Isabell Marcoux, now Executive Chair of the Board, stated, “As we approach our 50th anniversary, TC Transcontinental is once again reinventing itself. We are excited to open a new chapter in our history, with a sharp focus on advancing the transformation of our Retail Services & Printing and Educational Publishing businesses.”

Transformation as a Continuous Process

What ties these two stories together is not packaging, nor private equity, nor even deal size. It is the recognition that transformation is no longer a one-time event. In earlier eras, companies reinvented themselves maybe every few generations, often under duress. Today, the pace of technological change, customer behavior, and capital market expectations demands a different approach. Companies that do not continually reassess their strategic transformation may find themselves in a systemic downward spiral, too late to make the necessary changes.

ProAmpac and TC Transcontinental, in very different ways, avoided that trap. ProAmpac did not stop evolving once it achieved scale; it adjusted its acquisition strategy as the market matured. TC Transcontinental did not cling to packaging simply because it had worked; it recognized when the risk-reward equation had shifted and acted accordingly.

What This Means for Owners and Executives

The December 2025 lesson may be uncomfortable for some, but it is clear to industry leaders. The question is no longer whether transformation is necessary, but whether leadership teams are prepared to undertake it repeatedly. The industry is littered with companies that successfully navigated one transition, from offset to digital, from print to packaging, from production to services, only to stall when the next inflection point arrived.

Together, these two interlocking stories illustrate how survival in the printing, packaging, and graphic communications industries increasingly depends not on scale alone, but on a willingness to repeatedly redefine strategic corporate direction, sometimes in what appears to be a radical change of mission. Transformation is no longer a chapter in the story. It is the story.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

View The Target Report online, complete with deal logs and source links for December 2025

For more information on Graphic Arts Advisors, visit graphicartsadvisors.com