Seattle, WA, USA--(Jobwerx)--APRIL 6, 2005--This year Rexam published the Annual Review 2004 which qualifies as a Summary Financial Statement. The Annual Review 2004 does not contain sufficient information to allow for a full understanding of the results of the Group or the state of affairs of the Company and of the Group.

Rexam sales from ongoing operations advanced 4% to £3.1bn and their underlying profit before tax rose 26% to £300m. Free cash flow generation was again particularly strong at £226m.

The implementation of their strategy progressed effectively during 2004. Rexam continued to drive organic growth through a focus in a number of important areas including providing customer satisfaction, innovation in areas such as marketing, supply chain and information management and the pursuit of operational efficiency.

The highly successful integration of the Latasa beverage can business in Brazil, which was acquired in November 2003, has reaped even greater benefits than they first hoped for. One of the advantages of acquiring the Latasa operations is that they now, for the first time, have a substantial presence in the southern hemisphere.

In line with their strategy to consolidate the northern European glass container market, they strengthened their position during the year with the acquisition of two glassworks, one in the Netherlands and one in Poland.

Rexam also continued their strategy of investing in attractive sectors within consumer packaging. Following on from the acquisition of Risdon Pharma in 2003, they acquired Plastic Omnium Medical in France, a specialty plastic packaging supplier of drug delivery and dispensing systems. This represented a significant step forward in establishing a leading position in the fast growing pharmaceutical packaging market and in further cementing their relationships with a number of global industry players such as GlaxoSmithKline.

Nearly 15% of their sales are now in what are frequently referred to as emerging markets, including countries such as Brazil, Russia and China. During 2004, they strengthened their presence in these markets, acquiring full ownership and control of their beverage can plants in Mexico and China. These investments, together with their recent agreement to provide technical support to a beverage can plant start-up in India, and were all made in mind anticipating that they will contribute strongly to the future success of Rexam.

The European beverage can market continues to expand, despite the difficulties in Germany, and grew some 5% in 2004. Rexam expects the market to grow at a similar level in 2005. The traditional beverage can market in the USA is currently flat but Rexam sees numerous opportunities to expand through the introduction of faster growth products, such as non-standard can sizes with good growth in 8 oz and 24 oz cans, as well as slim cans, and they shall continue the conversion of additional standard 12 oz lines to non-standard sizes.

Monster™ Screw Top Beverage Containers by Rexam for Wet Planet Beverage’s Jolt cola - 23.5 oz (c. 70cl) re-sealable aluminium beverage can

Rexam launched the new Monster™ beverage can with screw top for an American cola manufacturer, a world first. Their Group-wide Six Sigma and Lean Enterprise programs yielded further substantial efficiency savings. They were recognised with a number of awards for their ground-breaking work in Supply Chain management and their successful implementation of SAP in their beverage can business was hailed as a textbook case study.

Rexam anticipates that they will deliver their usual levels of efficiencies with good volume and mix improvements, along with some price increases, are expected largely to offset cost inflation to further progress in 2005 in all areas including the cosmetics packaging, carbonated soft drinks and beer beverage sectors.

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