Cardboard company Smurfit Kappa completes €460m deal as it attempts to defend itself from an €8.9bn takeover

Cardboard packaging company Smurfit Kappa, which is currently the target of one of the biggest live takeover bids in the FTSE 100, beefed up yesterday with its own €460m (£403m) deal.

Smurfit announced it had agreed to acquire Reparenco, a paper business in the Netherlands which owns a 675,000 tonne capacity mill.

This comes as Smurfit tore up an €9.8bn takeover bid in March from US packaging firm International Paper (IP).

Read more: Smurfit Kappa has just rejected another approach from International Paper

A trio of Smurfit’s shareholders, including asset manager Janus Henderson, is urging the firm to at least hold talks with IP, the Financial Times reported yesterday.

Janus Henderson has indicated that it would not support an offer below €40 per share. IP’s last offer for Smurfit was €25.25 per share.

So far, Smurfit has rejected all of its US competitor’s approaches as it believes the deal does not make “strategic sense”.

Yet it said the acquisition of Reparenco would strengthen the business and “accelerates a central element of our medium term plan”.

Read more: Paper wars: “Take no action” Smurfit tells shareholders