Klaipedos Kartonas, a Lithuanian manufacturer of paper and cardboard, has got a formal permission of the Ukrainian antitrust committee to acquire a 50 per сent stake in the carton maker Nemuno Banga Mena based in the town of Mena, Chernigiv region.

The Ukrainian company was set up on the basis of the Mena cigarette filter maker and now manufactures double-face corrugated board for tobacco and food industry, as well as packaging for building materials. Ukrainian biggest tobacco makers are the plant’s basic customers, Reemtsma-Kyiv, BAT-Priluki and Liggett-Ducat Ukraine in the first place. The parent company, Nemuno Banga, was established in 1997 as a supplier of cigarette filters, primarily to Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria. Over the past few years, Nemuno Banga Group has turned into one of the fastest growing PET packaging producers in Central and Eastern Europe and now owns PET making plants in Lithuania, Russia (Saint-Petersburg) and Ukraine (Kyiv). (vt)