Tompla Envelopes is one of the largest suppliers of envelopes to the UK, with manufacturing sites at its Madrid headquarters and in France, while Encore is the largest independent UK envelope manufacturer.
As a result of the deal, Encore will absorb production of all of the Spanish firm’s UK business, which has a turnover of around £11m, as well as its UK customer services and sales office in Wimbledon, Surrey.
Under the terms of the deal, completed on 9 January, Encore will retain the Wimbledon office along with its 13 staff, while all production will gradually be transferred from Europe to Tyne and Wear as the site increases its capacity over the coming months. According to the company the acquisition will add a potential 30 to 40 new jobs to its existing 230-strong workforce.
The move by Encore, which produces printed envelopes for the direct and transactional mail markets, follows around £1m of investment in new high-speed envelope and printing equipment last year as the business prepared to expand its reach across the UK and Europe.
"This is an extremely important move for us as not only have we secured 230 jobs in a declining marketplace, but we will also need to bring in more people to handle the additional production – we are obviously delighted about that,” said managing director Russell Croisdale.
“The other key point is that it takes away one major competitor and brings us a new range of clients.
“We believe we can now improve on the business we’ve acquired. The Tompla UK team is well established in the UK and we feel that giving them a UK based manufacturing solution will create more opportunities for them to develop the business they enjoy further," he added.
Encore uses a specialist Lithoflex web technology, for which it has won a raft of awards, to produce high-quality direct mail envelopes.
The company also launched Encore Packaging Solutions in March 2013, to address the growing market for packaging and e-commerce deliveries, with plans to expand these activities in the first half of this year.
