KKR sells Papresa to Quantum

The sale ends a six-year holding period for KKR, which acquired Papresa from Spanish industrial group Grupo Alfonso Gallardo as part of a restructuring. The company received various facilities co-financed by KKR to help reduce its debt. The GP's total capital injection exceeded €225m and was completed via KKR's Special Situations Group.

Following its acquisition of Papresa, Quantum intends to maintain the company's workforce, promote its internationalisation, especially in the Asian market, and expand its sales network in Europe.

Given the 6% annual decrease in global demand for newsprint paper recorded in the last five years, Quantum will help Papresa diversify its current offering, with the addition of fast-growing products such as paperboard for packaging, the firm said in a statement.

Quantum will also focus on improving the company's environmental sustainability, with the aim of obtaining a strong sustainable growth in accordance with the highest environmental standards. To achieve this goal, the firm will allocate half of its initial investments to optimise environmental efficiency of the company's processes.

Quantum invests in companies based across western and southern Europe, which are in need of industrial transformation, operational improvement and strategic repositioning. The GP is currently investing from Quantum Opportunity Fund II, which closed on €77.5m in 2018. The vehicle targets carve-outs, spin-offs and buyouts of businesses with annual revenues between €20-500m and EBITDA margin from negative to 10%, and deploys equity tickets of up to €15m.

Quantum is headquartered in Munich, with offices in Milan and Madrid. Its portfolio currently comprises 21 companies based in eight European countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, the UK, Italy, Portugal and Spain).

Company
Based in Errentería, in the province of Gipuzkoa in the Basque Autonomous Community, Papresa is a producer of newsprint, standard, super white, coloured and directory paper for cold-set and heat-set printing, used for newspapers and commercial applications.

Operating three paper machines and two de-inking plants and employing 222 staff, Papresa has production capacity of 375,000 tonnes of paper per year.

The company generated EBITDA of €21m from revenues of €140m in 2019.  

People
Quantum Capital Partners – Steffen Görig (founder, CEO).

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