Arle bought the group  from the Candover 2001 fund, which Arle has managed since 2009.

Funds for the buyout have been raised from a syndicate of new investors which represents a return of 2.1 times the investment for the Candover 2001 fund. In effect the sale means that the ownership of Innovia remains with funds managed by the same international private equity company.  

Innovia employs 1,600 staff across its two divisions, Innovia Films and Innovia Security, and has operations located in the UK, US, Belgium and Australia.

Chief executive of Innovia Group David Beeby said: “We are delighted to maintain the same managing partner. We’ve been involved with Arle Capital for some years so in a sense it’s a combination of continuity and an opportunity to refresh. Arle will support our new investments in both our Films and Security businesses.”
 
Innovia Group recently announced £40m worth of investment on its Wigton site.  This includes a £20m investment that was announced after the Bank of England confirmed its decision to adopt polymer bank notes. The firm will use this to build a new plant to produce the new £5 and £10 polymer banknote substrate, creating around 70 to 80 further jobs on the Cumbria-based site.

Innovia Security currently manufactures the trademarked Guardian polymer substrate for banknote printing in Australia and Mexico.

“We supply 23 countries worldwide with polymer substrates for their banknotes and we continue to expand and supply other countries and also get more notes for the countries we already have. We think polymer substrates are a pretty compelling proposition from the point of view of security, durability and cost. It's a more secure, more durable and cleaner note and it's more environmentally-friendly,” said Beeby.

A further £20m will be spent on a gas turbine and a new 'bubble' which will increase its Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene (BOPP) output by 10%.

“The gas turbine is commissioned and starts up next month. That was around reducing our energy costs on the site and it also improves the life cycle analysis of a number of our products. That's 30% of the capital expenditure and the rest of it is building the bubble which we expect to be up and running in the first half of next year,” said Beeby.