Saint-Gobain plans to sell the rest of its Verallia glass packaging group by mid-2015 after it sold the unit's North American unit to Ardagh earlier this year.
Saint-Gobain CEO Pierre-Andre de Chalendar said the group had received numerous marks of interest from funds as well as industrial companies for Verallia, which makes jars for Nutella spread and bottles for Dom Perignon champagne.
Saint-Gobain has been looking to shed Verallia for years to focus on higher-margin home and construction products, but previous attempts to sell or spin off the unit were thwarted by the financial crisis.
Saint-Gobain, founded in 1665 to produce mirrors for the royal court of Versailles, is focusing on building materials for which there is growing demand as the construction industry shifts its focus towards energy-efficient buildings.
Sika
Saint-Gobain also said it planned to buy a controlling stake in construction chemicals group Sika for around 2.3 billion euros ($2.83 billion).
The Burkard family, Sika's currentmajority shareholder, decided to sell its controlling stake to Saint-Gobain through its holding Schenker Winkler Holding.
Sika, which is based in Switzerland however said in a separate statement that it did not support the change of control and that the company's management would resign if the deal went through.
"The board neither sees the industrial logic in the transaction, nor significant synergies for Sika," Sika said, adding that handing control to an industrial giant like Saint-Gobain would bring "a fundamental change."
