Visy, the privately held packaging company of the billionaire Pratt family, is understood to have placed its plastics division up for sale through investment bank Morgan Stanley. 

The US-based investment bank has been showing Visy Plastics around the market to prospective buyers, and so far estimates are that it could sell for about $200m. 

Private equity firms are perhaps the mostly likely parties to snap up the operation. It comes as a raft of packaging assets remain on offer, including O-I’s Asia-Pacific arm. 

Visy describes itself on its website as one of Australia’s largest manufacturers of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) containers. 

It produced more than 2.1 billion containers and 1.2 billion plastic preforms in 2017 and 2018. 

It is believed the company’s plastic recycling business is included in the sale. 

The company is part of Melbourne-based Visy Industries, the world’s largest paper, packaging and recycling company founded by the late Richard Pratt and now run by his son Anthony. 

This article was originally shared by The Australian Digital Edition on October 17 2019. Copyright © 2019 The Australian.