How to Sell a Packaging or Plastics Company: Multiples, Buyers, and Diligence

A packaging or plastics company sells for a multiple of EBITDA that buyers adjust for what they can test: whether margin holds when resin prices move, how much revenue rides on a few brand owners, and how much capital the presses and lines will need. Most buyers are strategic packaging groups or private-equity-backed platforms adding plants to a larger business. Beyond financial diligence they check resin pass-through contracts, food-contact compliance, state packaging EPR laws and environmental permits. This guide is general education; those rules change, and your own attorney and CPA decide how they apply.

What packaging and plastics companies have sold for: Bankerly’s deal data

Bankerly’s transaction database holds 16 disclosed packaging and plastics deals with a trailing EV/EBITDA. The basis is disclosed deals with targets at or below $25M of EBITDA, as of October 2026. Disclosed deals skew larger and better run than a typical owner-operated company, so the median is a reference point, not a price for your company.

A quarter of the deals priced below 6.0× and a quarter above 9.0×, so the spread says more than the middle. The 9 deals with targets earning $5M to $25M of EBITDA had a median of 6.2×; the 7 smaller targets are too few to report as a group, and samples this small cannot show a size effect either way. EV/revenue is the weaker yardstick here, because resin pass-through moves revenue whether or not profit moves. Three examples, which scatter wider than the quartiles:

Each multiple uses the trailing adjusted EBITDA its source reports. The full table is at M&A multiples by industry (sector page: packaging and plastics multiples), and how manufacturing businesses are valued covers the wider industrial range.

Resin pass-through is the first contract buyers read

Buyers read customer contracts before the income statement. Many converters sell at a price that moves with the resin they buy, through an escalator clause, a formula tied to a published index or a periodic reprice. Pretium Packaging, a maker of plastic bottles, wrote in its fiscal 2013 annual report that it passed through 100% of resin cost changes under arrangements based on published price indexes, typically with a one-to-four-month delay.

The lag is where margin leaks, and not all revenue is covered. A September 2024 Berry Global lender presentation for its planned nonwovens and films combination with Glatfelter said about 70% of the combined company’s revenue carried raw-material pass-through provisions, with a typical lag of about 90 days that varied by customer and contract. Silgan’s 2025 annual report describes a short lag in many of its custom container agreements.

Accounting then muddies the picture. AEP Industries, a plastic film maker, wrote that at constant volume a resin increase brings “increased sales revenues but lower gross profit as a percentage of sales,” and a decrease does the opposite. Berry’s fiscal 2024 annual report shows the scale: net sales fell $406 million, mainly on $375 million of lower selling prices as lower resin costs passed through, while the price-cost spread cost $20 million of operating income. Revenue followed resin; profit followed the spread.

So buyers rebuild the numbers per pound and look at material margin, which Pretium defined as sales price minus raw material costs, across a full resin cycle. The cycles are large: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ producer price index for thermoplastic resins and plastics materials rose 71% in 15 months, from 199.6 in May 2020 to 340.6 in August 2021, and in 2026 ran from 254.2 in January to 317.3 in May and 278.1 in September. Buyers ask for each contract’s index and reset date, any caps, the share of revenue with no pass-through, and the lag by customer.

Presses, lines and the capital they will need

A buyer prices a plant on what it earns after the cost of keeping it running. Diligence starts with a machine list: age, hours run, rebuild history, replacement cost and customers served for each press, extrusion line, thermoformer or printing press. Spending deferred before a sale shows up as strong EBITDA now and a bill for the buyer later, so analysts set several years of capex against depreciation and normalize the gap.

Utilization cuts two ways. A line running every available hour cannot take new volume without a new machine; a line with open shifts gives a strategic buyer room to move its own customers’ work in. Buyers want it measured the same way on every machine.

Scrap is where plant quality turns into dollars. Expect requests for scrap and regrind rates by line and by customer, complaint and return history, and the quality-system records behind them. Buyers also ask who owns each mold, die and printing plate: tooling the customer owns is not the company’s asset, and the customer decides where it runs.

The compliance file: food contact, EPR and permits

Food-contact rules and plant certificates

Packaging that touches food falls under FDA’s indirect food additive rules, 21 CFR Parts 174 through 178, which cover general provisions, adhesives and coatings, paper and paperboard, polymers, and adjuvants, production aids and sanitizers. Section 174.5 requires any substance in a food-contact article to be of a purity suitable for its intended use. A food contact notification becomes effective 120 days after FDA receives it unless FDA objects, and it applies only to the manufacturer or supplier named in it. Buyers therefore expect each resin, colorant, ink, adhesive and coating to trace to a regulation, an exemption or an effective notification for that supplier’s version.

Plant certification is the second layer. GFSI does not certify plants; it recognizes certification programs, and its list includes programs with a food packaging scope, among them BRCGS Packaging Materials, FSSC 22000 and IFS PACsecure. BRCGS reports more than 7,100 manufacturing sites in 94 countries certified to its packaging standard. Buyers check the certificate’s scope, the latest audit result and any open non-conformances.

State packaging EPR laws

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws make companies that sell packaged goods pay for recycling their packaging, usually through a producer responsibility organization (PRO). Seven states have enacted packaging EPR programs:

The obligated “producer” is typically whoever sells the packaged product, such as the brand owner, though Mayer Brown notes the definition can reach, in some instances, the manufacturer of the packaging itself. Fees often run higher for hard-to-recycle materials, and the laws may change which packaging customers buy; California’s SB 54 requires a 25 percent source reduction and a 65 percent recycling rate for single-use plastic packaging and food service ware by January 1, 2032. So buyers ask which customers sell into these states, how much of the mix sits in formats the fees penalize, and whether the target is itself a producer. Suits against Colorado’s and California’s programs were filed in 2026, so timetables can move.

Air and water permits

Buyers read the permit file next to a Phase I environmental site assessment. If a packaging plant is a major source of hazardous air pollutants, EPA’s printing and publishing rule (40 CFR Part 63, Subpart KK) covers its product and packaging rotogravure and wide-web flexographic presses. EPA’s effluent guidelines for plastics molding and forming (40 CFR Part 463) cover process wastewater from extrusion, molding, thermoforming and coating and are written into permits for plants that discharge directly to waters. Environmental diligence basics walks through Phase I and Phase II work. Rules differ by state and change; the seller’s attorney and environmental consultant decide what applies.

Brand-owner concentration, inventory and working capital

Many converters sell to a small number of large brand owners, and a buyer’s first request is the top-ten customer list by revenue and by gross profit. Packaging adds questions: how long the company has been the qualified source, whether pass-through and volume terms are written down, and what the contract says on change of control. Customer concentration covers the thresholds buyers use and the earnouts and escrows that follow.

Inventory has three layers: resin, film or board; work in process; and finished goods printed or molded to one customer’s specification. If that customer changes the artwork or drops the item, the goods have no other buyer, so reserves and counts get a hard look (inventory issues in M&A). Resin also moves working capital: AEP noted that the gap between taking an order, buying resin, producing and shipping affects its results and working capital needs. When resin jumps, inventory, receivables and payables all grow at the same volume, which can distort a peg built from a trailing average; the working capital peg guide covers the true-up.

Who is buying

Strategic buyers are operating companies rather than financial sponsors, like Silgan, Essentra and UFP Technologies in the table above. Essentra’s purchase of 3C! shows how synergies change the arithmetic: its $65 million price against $7.3 million of pro forma adjusted EBITDA is the 8.9× in the table, but Essentra expected about $4 million of annual synergies by year three, largely from network optimisation and procurement, and quoted 5.7× once they were counted. Strategic buyers and synergies explains why that can lift a bid.

Sponsors are the other large group. Capstone Partners’ July 2026 update counted 59 print, paper and packaging deals announced or completed so far in 2026: 26 by private strategic buyers, 19 by hybrid buyers (which it equates with sponsor-owned ones) and 10 by private equity platforms, on deals averaging $164.4 million of enterprise value. Smaller recent examples from Packaging Dive: private equity firm New Water Capital bought LidWorks, a family-owned lid maker, and Specialized Packaging Group, an Altamont Capital Partners portfolio company, bought DFW Crating & Packaging. The industry is fragmented: the Plastics Industry Association counted 10,228 plastics-product establishments in 2024 with 673,600 employees, about 66 per plant. Private equity buyers explained covers platform and add-on deals.

The Bottom Line

Buyers price a packaging or plastics company on its spread over resin, the capital its machines need and the paperwork around food contact, EPR and permits, not on revenue alone. Platforms such as Bankerly are one way to organize that file and run the process, alongside investment banks, business brokers and your own counsel. Multiples here are educational estimates, not appraisals.

Sources

• SEC: Pretium Packaging 10-K, fiscal 2013
• SEC: AEP Industries 10-K, fiscal 2013
• SEC: Berry Global 10-K, fiscal 2024
• SEC: Berry Global lender presentation, September 4, 2024
• SEC: Silgan Holdings 10-K, fiscal 2025
• FRED: PPI, thermoplastic resins and plastics materials (BLS)
• Cornell LII: 21 CFR Parts 174–178
• Cornell LII: 21 CFR 174.5
• Cornell LII: 21 U.S.C. 348, food additives
• FDA: About the FCS Review Program
• GFSI: Certification
• GFSI: Recognised certification programme owners
• BRCGS: Celebrating 25 years of Packaging Materials
• Packaging Dive: Tracking US state packaging policies
• Mayer Brown: EPR packaging laws, concept to compliance
• Proskauer: EPR packaging law update, July 2026
• Sidley Austin: EPR update, January 2026
• Holland & Knight: Federal court upholds Oregon’s EPR law
• CalRecycle: SB 54 packaging EPR
• CEQAnet: CalRecycle SB 54 implementing regulations
• Cornell LII: 40 CFR 63.820
• EPA: Plastics molding and forming effluent guidelines
• Capstone Partners: Print, paper & packaging update, July 2026
• Packaging Dive: Packaging dealmaking, September 2026
• Plastics Industry Association: 2025 Size and Impact Report
• Essentra: Acquisition of 3C! Packaging, Inc.