Graeme Hart’s Reynolds Group has sold $US1 billion in eight-year senior notes priced at 8.5% or 509 basis points over comparable US Treasuries, according to Thompson Reuters data.

The Auckland-based food and beverage packaging company announced last week the proceeds would be used to help fund the acquisition of the Evergreen Packaging group of companies and the Whakatane Mill from Carter Holt Harvey.

Both those companies are ultimately owned by Mr Hart.

Giant Manila-based brewer San Miguel and a Japanese partner are buying majority control of Australian family-owned Cospak, a packaging company with a plastics manufacturing unit in Auckland.

The $A50 million deal will give San Miguel Yamamura Packaging International a 65% stake in Cospak, which owns the Premier Plastics Group in East Tamaki as well as a Cospak sales operation.

A new campaign pushing for a levy on all plastic supermarket bags used in New Zealand has received lukewarm support from the Packaging Council, which warns that households could replace the bags they use to contain rubbish with heavier gauge plastic containers.

The "Get Real" plastic bag campaign was launched over the weekend and is demanding that supermarket giants Progressive Enterprises and Foodstuffs start charging for plastic bags at their counters.

Major retail groups say their voluntary campaign to reduce the use of plastic shopping bags by a fifth is on target to reach the goal by July.

Three of the country’s largest retail chains – The Warehouse, Progressive Enterprises/Woolworths and Foodstuffs – signed the Packaging Accord in 2004 to reduce the use of plastic shopping bags in a five-year initiative.

Retailers Association CEO John Albertson says: “When we launched Make a Difference in July 2007, we asked people to take one bag less each time they shop…