Aptar financials show growth from acquisitions and personal care, while beauty slows

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The packaging and dispensing technologies company announced Q4 and full 2020 results last month, foregrounding “the resiliency of the Company’s business model” during COVID-19.

Headquartered in Crystal Lake, Illinois, the global company serves the pharma, food and beverage, home, personal care, and beauty industries with solutions for drug delivery, consumer product dispensing, and active materials.

In personal care this past year, dispensing systems for hand sanitizer and soaps were (not surprisingly) in demand. And while, according to published comments from Stephan B. Tanda, Aptar’s President and CEO, “the beauty fragrance and on-the-go beverage markets is expected to remain under pressure,” in 2021, the company anticipates “continued solid growth in our injectables components, active material solutions and dispensing systems for sanitizers [and] cleaners.”

Aptar’s beauty business grew in 2020 with the acquisition of FusionPKG

In January 2020, Aptar expanded its full-service color cosmetics business by acquiring FusionPKG. As Cosmetics Design reported at the time, “growth by acquisition and investment is nothing new to the company…in 2005 Aptar bought the MBF group; in 2016…Mega Airless; and more recently, in 2018 the company acquired the Reboul packaging business.”

The deal was expected to broaden Aptar’s reach in both makeup and skin care. And as Tanda told the press last year, “Our plan is to leverage FusionPKG’s market facing strengths in combination with our broad product and technology platforms. FusionPKG is an excellent complement to our current North America business, and there is great potential to scale this model in Europe and other regions.” Read more about Aptar’s acquisition of FushionPKG here on CosmeticsDesign.com.

So while fate intervened and Aptar’s Total Reported Sales in Beauty and Home were down 4% for the year, acquisitions in the segment were up 4%.

Demand in personal care segment remained strong in Q4

Reflecting on Aptar’s Q4 performance in particular, Tanda points out that the company’s “diversified portfolio of innovative products enabled us to deliver a strong fourth quarter and full-year performance, including the generation of significant cash from operations and free cash flow….In our Beauty + Home segment, sluggish demand from the beauty market improved modestly from the third quarter and was offset by increased sales to the personal care and home care markets,” he says, in a recent press release about the Q4 and year-end financials, adding that, “I am proud of how our global team performed in the face of a very difficult environment.”