Arnest Packaging Solutions signs Uzbekistan factory agreement

Arnest Packaging Solutions signed an investment agreement with Uzbekistan's government for an aluminium beverage-can factory, Interfax reported on 15 October 2024, citing the company's press service. Investment is planned at around $100 million, with a possible launch in autumn 2025.

Planned production

Annual capacity is projected to exceed 1.5 billion cans, with more than 200 jobs.
Around 30% of output is intended for export.

Alexander Isaev said the project would allow Russian export volumes to be redirected to domestic demand.

The preceding corporate reorganization

A separate Interfax report dated 15 May 2024 described consolidation into Arnest Packaging Solutions Naro-Fominsk LLC. The joining entities were the Vsevolozhsk, Rostov and Arnest Packaging Solutions companies, the latter previously named Ball Beverage Packaging Rus. The can and can-end plants in Naro-Fominsk would remain within that company.

Vsevolozhsk was to become a branch, alongside Argayash and Ulyanovsk. Isaev said employment conditions and job numbers would remain unchanged and financial and social obligations to more than 1,000 workers would be preserved. Parent company Orix JSC was to be renamed Arnest Packaging Solutions.

The earlier business-name change

On 16 February 2023, Interfax reported registration of the Arnest Packaging Solutions business name. The announcement stated that only the corporate name changed; company details and addresses remained unchanged. President Alexey Sagal said an employee working group devised the name, combining the parent Arnest brand with the beverage-packaging activity.

That dated report recorded three can factories and a can-end factory in the Moscow, Leningrad and Chelyabinsk regions.

The acquired manufacturing business

A separate Interfax report of 22 September 2022 recorded Ball Corporation's completed sale of its Russian beverage-packaging business to Arnest for $530 million. All necessary approvals had been obtained. The plants were in Naro-Fominsk, Vsevolozhsk and Argayash.

The report put the Russian business's 2021 contribution at approximately 4% of Ball's worldwide revenue and 8% of operating profit. Russian plants accounted for about 5% of global beverage-can shipments, whose worldwide total was 112.5 billion cans that year.