Becoming official on 1 November, along with a restructure that involved its accounts department relocating to its Leicester site, the new brand is said by the business to help reinforce its position as one of the UK’s leading flexible packaging manufacturers for the food, publishing, retail and security markets. It is forecasting 25% growth over the next three years.
Group managing director Simon Rose said that “considerable thought and debate” had gone into the decision to adopt one name considering the respective strength of the two brands.
“The merger is six months old and what we found in terms of customers, suppliers and also personnel is that one remained two separate entities and there was still a tendency for people to be loyal towards CPS or Mercury,” said Rose.
“So we took the decision for the name change from a commercial perspective, to understand how to recognise us as one business and make it easier for suppliers from an accounting perspective to deal with one business."
Rose, who was CPS production and managing director before becoming group managing director after March’s merger, added that he believed it would help employees “continue to embrace the union” and would make it easier for customers to do business.
A number of specialist conversion and lamination pieces of equipment will now be relocated from Nottinghamshire to Leicester, while specialist extrusion kit will be developed for the Leicester site, and shift patterns across both sites will be further standardised. Leicester focuses on higher volumes and mass production while Nottinghamshire is more specialised, working mainly in the security and medical sectors.
The group runs a Comexi eight-colour gearless press, a Soma Optima flexo press, a Uteco Onyx flexo press with Uteco digital laminator, six extrusion lines and a range of converting, slitting and rewinding equipment.
CPS initially approached Mercury in 2016 as it was looking to move into new markets, having invested in building and print capacity, while Mercury was also seeking expansion, having reached full capacity on its recently purchased Uteco press.
