Coveris, which earlier this year announced a £3m investment plan for its Cambridgeshire-based cartonboard plants, has purchased the assets of Gelpack Industrial's Madley, Hertfordshire site, for an undisclosed fee after reaching an agreement with Gelpack administrators, KPMG.
"The most significant investment for Coveris is the two Alpine five-layer co-extrusion lines but also includes bag-making equipment in addition to other manufacturing kit," said chief operating officer, films at Coveris UK, Martin Davis.
"Our strategic plans are to invest in equipment for our existing sites in this sector. The investment in Gelpack’s assets fits soundly with Coveris’ existing manufacturing footprint and will add capacity and capability in key targeted areas for our business," he explained.
Coveris has extensive research and development technology in extrusion and co-extrusion manufacturing and Davis said the two lines would be redeployed at its Winsford, Cheshire centre of excellence, which according to the firm is the biggest extrusion facility in the UK. Coveris has further extrusion and co-extrusion capabilities in Louth, Lincolnshire. Arrangements are being finalised for the integration of the additional equipment across its exsiting sites, Davis added.
Coveris UK food and consumer president, Gary Rehwinkel said that the firm has seen significant growth in the demand for multi-layer co-extruded PE films and that investment was part of the plan to meet this and future growth.
“The introduction of this machinery provides Coveris with additional 5,000 tonnes of five-layer co-extrusion capacity, enabling us to better serve our customers,” he added.
The Gelpack companies, which developed high-performance films, bags, liners and sacks for a range of industrial sectors, fell into administration earlier this month with Chris Pole and Mark Orton from KPMG appointed joint administrators to the two companies on 3 August.
The collapse resulted in 175 redundancies with a skeleton staff staying on in the short term to fulfil outstanding orders and assist the administrators in the ongoing sale of assets and winding-down process.
