Goldman Sachs Alternatives to Acquire Reusable Packaging Company Tosca From Apax

Funds advised by Apax Partners have signed an agreement to sell Tosca, a global provider of reusable asset pooling and logistics solutions for the food supply chain, to Infrastructure at Goldman Sachs Alternatives. Financial terms were not disclosed. Founded in 1959 and acquired by Apax funds in 2017, Tosca serves food producers, distributors and retailers across North America and Europe, and the transaction is expected to complete in 2026 subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

 

Why Reusable Asset Pooling Is a Genuine Circular Economy Mechanism

 

Tosca's core business, reusable asset pooling, replaces single-use packaging in food supply chains with a shared network of reusable containers and pallets that circulate between producers, distributors and retailers rather than being discarded after a single use. That model addresses packaging waste at a structural level: instead of each shipment generating new packaging destined for disposal, the same physical assets are collected, washed and returned to circulation repeatedly, reducing the total volume of packaging material a given amount of food distribution ultimately requires.

Goldman Sachs Alternatives partner Cedric Lucas explicitly positioned Tosca at the intersection of increased automation in food supply chains, growing demand for circular economy solutions, and broader adoption of reusable asset pooling, framing the business's commercial growth thesis as directly tied to a genuine environmental mechanism rather than treating circularity as a marketing overlay on an otherwise conventional logistics business.

 

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Why the Food Supply Chain Specifically Benefits From This Model

 

Reusable pooling solutions are particularly well suited to food supply chains because food distribution typically involves high-frequency, repeat shipments between the same categories of participants, producers, distributors and retailers, creating a genuine closed loop where pooled assets can circulate predictably rather than requiring open-ended one-way logistics. Charlotte Saury, managing director within Infrastructure at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, described Tosca as providing mission-critical supply chain infrastructure to non-discretionary, resilient staple food end markets, a framing that positions the business's defensive characteristics, steady demand tied to essential food distribution rather than discretionary consumer spending, as central to its investment appeal alongside its environmental function.

That combination of environmental benefit and demand resilience is a pattern increasingly attractive to infrastructure investors specifically, since it offers the kind of predictable, essential-service revenue infrastructure funds typically seek while also aligning with growing regulatory and corporate pressure to reduce packaging waste across supply chains, a dynamic visible in the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation and similar circular economy policy developments covered elsewhere in recent reporting.

 

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What the Stated Growth Plans Signal About the Investment Thesis

 

Both Goldman Sachs Alternatives executives specifically cited further wash centre automation and technology deployment as priorities for Tosca's next phase of growth. Wash centres, the facilities where reusable containers are cleaned and prepared for recirculation, represent an operational bottleneck central to how quickly and cost-effectively pooled assets can be returned to the supply chain; automating that process would likely improve both the speed of asset turnover and the unit economics of operating a reusable pooling network at larger scale.

That emphasis on automation, alongside expansion across North America and Europe, suggests Goldman Sachs Alternatives views operational efficiency improvements as a key lever for growth beyond simply expanding the company's existing geographic footprint, positioning the acquisition as a bet on scaling an already-established circular economy infrastructure platform through technology investment rather than requiring a fundamentally new business model.

 

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What This Fits Within a Broader Pattern of Infrastructure Investment

 

Apax partner Ashish Karandikar described the firm's role in developing Tosca into a leading global reusable asset pooling platform with a strong operational foundation during its ownership period since 2017, framing this sale as a natural progression to a new owner suited to the company's next growth phase, a pattern of private equity ownership handoff similar to other infrastructure and circular economy transactions covered in recent reporting, where an initial owner builds out a platform's operational scale before selling to an investor positioned to fund the next stage of expansion. Whether Tosca's continued expansion under Goldman Sachs Alternatives' ownership succeeds in scaling wash centre automation and network reach at the pace both firms describe, and whether growing regulatory pressure around packaging waste continues strengthening demand for reusable pooling solutions across the food supply chain, will determine how significant this acquisition proves for the broader circular packaging infrastructure sector.

 

Source: Goldman Sachs