Orora has sold its its Australian cardboard packaging business to Nippon Paper for $1.72 billion, triggering a surge in its share price of as much as 19 per cent at one point on Thursday.

The packaging manufacturer capitalised on the ambitions of Nippon Paper to take on Anthony Pratt's Visy Industries in the growing paper packaging market, which the Japanese giant believes will grow at the expense of plastic packaging because of environmental concerns.