Business news in brief

In the Region

Graham Packaging being acquired

Plastic-container supplier Graham Packaging Co. Inc., York, Pa., is being acquired by Connecticut consumer goods packaging company Silgan Holdings Inc., in a $4.1 billion deal announced Wednesday. It would create a $6.2 billion combined operation with 17,000 global employees. The merger comes roughly a year after Graham became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. The cash-and-stock transaction is valued at $19.56 a share and includes assumed indebtedness. For every share of Graham stock, shareholders will receive $4.75 cash and 0.402 shares of Silgan common stock, which was valued at $14.81 a share on Tuesday, according to the York company. Graham's local plants are in York; Bordentown, Burlington County; and Newark, Del. - Maria Panaritis

Tasty union agreed to contract

On Sunday, the day before the announcement that Flowers Foods Inc. had agreed to buy Tasty Baking Co. for $34.5 million plus the assumption of Tasty's heavy debt load, 249 newly organized workers at the baker's South Philadelphia site agreed to a four-year union contract, according to Tasty's annual report, which was filed Tuesday after the stock market closed. The workers had voted in August to join the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union. Flowers, Thomasville, Ga., employs 8,800, but only 780 of them are unionized, according to the company's most recent annual report. Tasty also reported that its loss in the most recent fiscal year, when it completed its move into the new, $78 million bakery at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, ballooned to $45.2 million, compared with a loss of $3.4 million the year before. Revenue was off 5 percent, to $171.7 million in the year ended Dec. 25, from $180.6 million the year before. - Harold Brubaker

Chemtura may acquire Indian firms

Chemtura Corp., a Philadelphia maker of specialty and farm chemicals, seeks to acquire companies in India that make industrial chemicals, in a bid to quadruple sales to $2 billion from the Asia-Pacific region by 2015. The size of the acquisition will be "significant," chief executive officer Craig Rogerson told reporters in New Delhi. The company imports fire retardant, automotive, and other industrial chemicals into India at present. - Bloomberg News

Chocolate maker opens Eddystone lab