Packaging
Cereplast Receives Funding from European Group Led by Major Swedish Bank
Monday 20. July 2009 - Cereplast, Inc. (OTCBB: CERP), developer of proprietary bio-based sustainable plastics, today announced that the company has received funding from a European group of investors led by a major Swedish bank.
The funds will be used to implement Cereplasts new strategic plan to accelerate growth and to finance manufacturing supply agreements for the companys major customers such as Georgia-Pacific and Dorel.
“The additional capital allows us to move forward aggressively in a very challenging economic environment,” said Frederic Scheer, Chairman and CEO of Cereplast. “This investor group clearly understands the rapidly growing market opportunity for bio-plastics and has endorsed our business model that leverages our proprietary product development capabilities and marketing strengths.”
Others in the financial community have also commented favorably about Cereplasts new strategic plan. “The new licensing structure has the potential to help Cereplast land contracts with large packaging companies, which require large quantities of resin in a short time,” said René Nicolodi, senior sustainability analyst at Zuercher Kantonalbank (Zurich Cantonal Bank), which began looking at Cereplast in 2007 as a potential investment from a sustainability perspective.
“It’s quite important to note that their business plan or model until very recently was to ramp up their own production facilities for a variety of products, and that’s capital intensive, so it’s a challenging thing to achieve,” Nicolodi said. “The change in the business model to license out the production to the clients makes sense from my point of view.”