Exal, S.A.

The Exal Group is the largest manufacturer of impact extruded aluminum containers in the world. While the company has reached its global leadership position in a relatively short period of time, the business had a very modest beginning. From the onset the the organization was driven by a commitment to be the very best. Exal Corporation was founded in Youngstown, Ohio, in October of 1993, by current President and CEO Delfin Gibert. The goal was to bring innovative state of the art impact extruded aluminum container manufacturing technology to North America. At that time there was a growing demand for a new source of high quality, high value, competitively priced impact extruded containers. Today Exal North America is the largest impact extruded container manufacturer in the region with 14 production lines housed in two buildings, totaling almost 500,000 square feet of manufacturing area. The Youngstown campus is also home to Exal’s lightweight aluminum coil manufacturing technology known as “Coil to Can” or “C2C”. In 1997 Exal expanded into Latin America, building a new state of the art impact extruded aluminum container manufacturing facility in Pilar, Argentina, outside of Buenos Aires. Modeled after the original Exal plant in North America the facility has been expanded several times and serves key global strategic customers that operate in the Latam region. In 2002 Exal entered the third party contract manufacturing business by acquiring the manufacturing operations of The Gillette Company (now Procter & Gamble) located in Garin, outside of Buenos Aires. The business, now known as Exal Packaging, serves many strategic customers and is the largest independent third party manufacturer of aerosols and liquids in the entire Latam region. In 2004 Exal entered the European market in a significant way through the acquisition of Boxal, the largest manufacturer of impact extruded packaging in that region. Purchased from ALCAN Inc., the Boxal transaction included container manufacturing locations in Beaurepaire, France (about 65 km from Lyon) and Veenendaal, The Kingdom of The Netherlands (outside of Amsterdam). Through the purchase Exal also gained Boxal’s lightweight tin plated steel coil container manufacturing technology, “Newcan”, which has many key synergies with Exal’s “C2C” Technology in North America. In addition, as a result of the Boxal transaction, Exal also acquired an aluminum slug making operation in Belfaux, Switzerland (outside of Bern) and a 50% share of COPAL, an aluminum slug making operation in Beaurepaire, France. Today Exal Group enjoys revenues of approximately half a billion USD and employs about 1325 people on three continents. The company has a strategic plan that includes aggressive expansion into new geographies over the next few years.