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Berry Global Supports Medicom in Producing Face Masks in UK

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Berry Global Group, Inc. (BERY - Free Report) recently announced its partnership with The Medicom Group to support the latter in its commitment to the British government in producing a large number of face masks annually. Notably, the collaboration will involve the company to ensure the supply of nonwoven fabric required for the production of face masks by Medicom.

Inside the Headlines

Berry Global is undertaking efforts to enhance the production capacity of protective material with investment in a new meltblown nonwoven line at one of its manufacturing facilities located in the United Kingdom. The company will work on incorporating its proprietary charging technology into this production line for delivering optimal filtration efficiency. This will help it cater to growing demand for protective material, suitable for the manufacturing of Type IIR and N99-identical FFP3 masks, conforming to European standards. It’s worth noting here that Medicom’s European Kolmi brand will make these masks and sell the finished products in the market.

This latest strategic move highlights Berry Global’s increased participation in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak. Notably, in May 2020, the company made efforts to drive its global Meltex meltblown capacity with the inclusion of an additional meltblown asset in Berlin for the production of high-efficiency filtration media. This production line will aid in catering to growing customer demand for the material conducive to premium applications including FFP2 (N95) and FFP3 (N99) for the face-mask markets. This apart, in April, the company added another meltblown capacity at its Waynesboro plant with the expansion of its state-of-the-art Meltex platform.

Zacks Rank, Price Performance and Estimate Trend

Berry Global with a $5.5-billion market capitalization currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). The company’s diversified business structure allows it to mitigate the weakness in one end market with strength the across others. Also, its RPC Group buyout (completed in July 2019) has been enhancing its growth opportunities in the plastic and recycled packaging industry. However, persistent softness in its Engineered Materials segment and high-debt level remain major concerns for the company.

In the past three months, the company has rallied 21.3% compared with the industry’s growth of 19.6%.



In the past 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in fiscal 2020 (ending September 2020) has risen 1.8% to $4.05 while the same for fiscal 2021 (ending September 2021) moved 1.5% north to $4.61.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks from the same space are Graphic Packaging Holding Company (GPK - Free Report) , Broadwind Energy, Inc. (BWEN - Free Report) and Intellicheck, Inc. (IDN - Free Report) . While Graphic Packaging currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Broadwind Energy and Intellicheck carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Graphic Packaging delivered a positive earnings surprise of 9.59%, on average, in the trailing four quarters.

Broadwind Energy pulled off a positive earnings surprise of 50.00%, on average, in the last four quarters.

Intellicheck came up with a positive earnings surprise of 70.24%, on average, in the preceding four quarters.

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