Great interview – Thomas Morin, CEO of TC Transcontinental | Growth that is not just an impression

10 years ago, TC Transcontinental initiated an important strategic shift by acquiring the American company Capri Packaging, a manufacturer of flexible packaging for the food sector. Since 2014, Transcontinental has made 10 acquisitions in the field of packaging, which today generates nearly 60% of the group’s revenues, still active in the field of printing and media.

Remember that TC Transcontinental was strongly affected by the vast and irrepressible movement to digitize economic activity and had to review its business model which was essentially based on newspaper and book printing activities.

In 2013, before its strategic shift, TC Transcontinental achieved revenues of 2.1 billion, 66% of which came from the printing sector (newspapers, weeklies, circulars, books, etc.) and 33% from the media (weeklies, newspaper Businessmagazines, circulars, etc.).

Since 2014, the group has taken the packaging production and printing sector by storm through multiple acquisitions of manufacturing plants which were all family-owned businesses, apart from the 2018 acquisition of Coveris Americas, which belonged to an investment fund and which was the most important in the sequence.

TC Transcontinental paid US1.3 billion to acquire Coveris Americas, which owned 15 factories located mainly in North America, with the exception of one factory in Great Britain and another in New -Zealand.

It was in the wake of this transaction that Thomas Morin, the current CEO of TC Transcontinental, joined the company in 2019 as president of TC Emballages Transcontinental in Chicago, before becoming president of the entire group in June 2023.

In the packaging sector, TC Transcontinental’s footprint is firmly anchored in North America with 3 factories in Canada, 15 in the United States and 5 in Latin America.

“Our packaging strategy is simple. We want to make packaging that will be recycled, that contains recycled materials and that can be compostable, like our coffee packaging.

“We also and above all want to produce packaging that extends the lifespan of products. We have packaging for cheeses that can allow certain products to be preserved for up to a year. Flexible packaging can increase the shelf life of meat from three days to more than twenty days,” explains the CEO.

The packaging sector generated revenues of 1.7 billion in 2023, and the group employs 3,700 people in its 25 factories.

Emerging activities

On the printing side, TC Transcontinental is still a very active player with its four printing centers in Quebec, five in Ontario and three factories in Alberta, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. In 2023, this activity recorded revenues of 1.2 billion and employed 3,200 people in the country.

“These revenues include all activities of our Retail Services and Printing division, which include activities from our new Raddar flyers that we launched last spring and which are delivered by mail.

“Our physical flyer uses 60% less paper and is distributed in more than 3 million copies in Quebec and 2 million in British Columbia. We plan to launch Raddar soon in the maritime provinces,” anticipates Thomas Morin.

The CEO of TC Transcontinental did not want to comment on the labor dispute which is paralyzing the Canadian postal system and which will affect the delivery of circulars, preferring to let the special mediator named in the file do his work.

TC Transcontinental still prints around a hundred newspapers in Canada today, including Globe and Mail, as well as weeklies and monthlies.

In addition to supporting retail businesses by publishing their weekly specials, the Transcontinental group launched in 2019 a new service for manufacturing kiosks set up in supermarkets.

“We offer merchants a physical environment to promote their products. It’s like having a mini-store within a store. We did it with Scène Plus kiosks at IGA or Milwaukee kiosks that we install in Home Depots,” explains Thomas Morin.

TC Transcontinental uses its printing capabilities and combines them with its long-established expertise in content development to offer such environments. This sector generated revenues of 200 million last year and is growing.

Finally, the Media division of TC Transcontinental today brings together all educational book publishing activities and the distribution of specialized works, as well as the publication of various specialized works in the construction sector in Quebec.

“We are in the top 10 of the largest publishers in the French language education sector in the world,” underlines the CEO.

Thomas Morin is particularly pleased that the group has succeeded over the last four quarters in delivering increased profitability, which has contributed to reducing its debt below the threshold of 2 times its EBITDA, to 1.9 times to be more precise. , which bodes well for the future.