Oaktree Capital buys majority stake in Cogent Glass

HYDERABAD: US based investment firm Oaktree Capital Management has acquired a majority stake of 60% in the Hyderabad headquartered pharmaceutical packaging firm Cogent Glass, which attracted an enterprise valuation of Rs 200 crore.

In a statement on Monday, Cogent Glass, a manufacturer of moulded type glass vials and tubular glass vials and ampoules, said support of Oaktree should help it achieve the ambition of emerging as the world's leading pharmaceutical glass manufacturer.

Oaktree has appointed its representative Jean Rollier as the non-executive chairman on the board of Cogent Glass.

Oaktree, with $80 billion assets under management, already has investments in the packaging sector. One of Oaktree's portfolio firms SGD, a leading French manufacturer of glass for pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry, has agreed to extend technology and marketing support to Cogent Glass.

While the global pharmaceutical glass packaging market is estimated at about $3 billion, there are no figures available on the size of the Indian market.

Cogent was founded in 2010 by the Hyderabad-based promoters RP Reddy, MM Reddy and Iqbal Singh, who together invested 28 million Euros in the Greenfield facility that took off this February. "The manufacturing facility, located at Addakal near Hyderabad, can generate Rs 250 crore of revenue a year by 2014-15 at full capacity," Ashok Sudan, chief executive officer of SGD and director of Cogent told ET from Paris.