May 26, 2003/ Chicago, Ill / When Paris-based Pechiney sold the manufacturing business of American National Can four years ago, it broke up a century-old Chicago institution.

The $11 billion parent company, whose biggest business is selling aluminum to automakers and others, had lost faith in the growth prospects for its well-known U.S. can business.

Pechiney kept American National's smaller, more innovative plastics packaging business, which introduced the first squeezable ketchup bottle in 1990 and last year began manufacturing "upside down" ketchup bottles for Hunt's and Del Monte.

Children would know Pechiney Plastic Packaging, still based in Chicago, through its "EZ Squirt" curvy bottles full of Heinz' green ketchup.

But those products are among the least of Pechiney Plastic's endeavors since it emerged from the shadow of its can-making sibling.

Ilene Gordon, president of Pechiney Plastic, has overseen the company's acquisition of six competitors since taking the helm in 1999, helping send sales to about $1.3 billion from $800 million.

With roughly four deals in the works at any given time, she shows no signs of slowing down.

"Unless you're a leader and have volume, you can't survive," Gordon said.

Pechiney Plastic is the world's third-largest maker of flexible plastic packaging and, like other big players, is quickly snapping up smaller competitors to gain the market share it will need to stay in the world's $60 billion flexible packaging industry.

Gordon, who doubled Pechiney Plastic's presence in Europe through a 2001 acquisition and has bought companies in the U.S., Argentina and New Zealand, has her eye on expanding in Asia, Eastern Europe and South America.

Flexible packaging--which does not include ketchup bottles and other hard plastic containers--represents about 80 percent of Pechiney Plastic's revenues. Its products include fruit juice pouches for Minute Maid, pouches for Armor All car wipes, and packages for Swiffer floor wipes.

Like a lot of things that people take for granted, these packages are more complicated than they seem. Some require as many as 14 very thin layers of plastic, each with its own special purpose.

There are layers to ensure that oxygen does not seep in. Fruit juices, for example, will go bad if they are not protected from oxygen.

Salad mixes, on the other hand, need to be held in packages that breathe a bit. So there are plastic layers that allow air in.

And there are special layers that keep odors from leaking out, because you would not want the smell of your Pledge furniture wipes rubbing off on the carrots in your grocery bag. Another layer keeps the wipes from drying out.

The various layers are melted or otherwise melded together into what appears to most consumers to be one simple piece of plastic, easily stored and thrown away.

The convenience of flexible packaging--compared to cans, jars and even plastic bottles--is a big part of what keeps the market growing, said Paul Pezzoli, Pechiney Plastic's head of research and development for flexible packaging.

Flexible plastics also tend to be less expensive than other materials, which cuts packaging costs for clients like Procter & Gamble and ConAgra.

Although Pechiney Plastic executives believe that many products, from baby food to beer to car batteries, eventually will be held in plastic, the products have to be accepted by consumers.

Take the stand-up pouch now popular for everything from pet food to fruit and nut snacks. Those pouches were resoundingly rejected by U.S. consumers in the 1980s, although they became popular in Japan and Europe, Pezzoli said.

"The stand-up pouch flopped miserably," he said.

Then someone decided to make the bags resealable, and "as a result, stand-up pouches have become one of the fastest-growing packaging designs in the country," Pezzoli said.

He is quick to say that it is easier to put new products--single-serve juices, furniture and car wipes--in new packaging than it is to convert old products.

Just look at the soup cans still lining grocery store shelves.

Currently a plastic container for soup would cost about the same as a can, but the plastic could not be filled as quickly. The slower process would cost soup manufacturers more money than the convenience of plastic is worth.

"Twenty years ago people thought there'd be no soup cans by now," Pezzoli said.

And yet most soup still comes in can. It's just no longer in cans made by American National Can.