Owens-Illinois (O-I) has entered an agreement to acquire the glass container manufacturing business of Hebei Rixin Glass Group Co, situated in northern China.

The deal will mean that the glassmaker has more than doubled its capacity in China over the last year, taking the total to more than one million tonnes (up from 440,000 tonnes), which makes the company China’s second largest glass container manufacturer.

The acquisition, located in the Beijing/Tianjin region of China’s Hebei province, includes two plants and delivers an additional 270,000 tonnes of capacity for O-I.

“This acquisition supports our strategy of expanding in emerging markets with strong growth and long-term earnings potential,” said O-I’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Al Stroucken. “Our operations in China now include eight glass manufacturing plants, as well as a plant in Tianjin that produces moulds for glass manufacturing. The newly acquired plants have lower cost profiles than our existing operations in China, thereby enabling us to expand our reach beyond the premium markets and into the rapidly growing mass beer market,” he added.

The agreement follows recent acquisitions in China’s Sichuan province, announced in May 2010 and Guandong province, announced in October 2010.