Jonny Marston and Howard Smith from KPMG were appointed administrators of the Bury-headquartered consumer goods packaging manufacturer on 3 April after the company suffered operational challenges that led to an additional funding requirement that could not be met.
Marston said: “Thanks to the overwhelming support of both customers and suppliers since our appointment, we have been able to recommence part-production across the business’s two sites.
“We are also in dialogue with a number of interested parties in the business, and will continue these discussions over the coming days and weeks in the hope of achieving a sale.
“Unfortunately, however, we have had to make redundancies across the two sites - 152 in total. We are now assisting these employees with their claims for any sums due to them from the Redundancy Payments Service.”
The company, which also has a production facility in Saffron Walden, had 350 staff prior to the administration.
Pulse Flexible Packaging was established in May 2014 following a management buyout (MBO) of the UK operations of Printpack Enterprises Ltd from US parent Printpack Inc.
The business recorded a turnover of £57.9m and gross profit of £8.8m for the year ended 31 March 2016. However, it had administration expenses of £5.7m and other charges that contributed to overall profit for the period of £1.7m.
A potential pre-pack sale of the firm was blocked due to its pension scheme being a shareholder and secured creditor of the business. The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) is expected to take on the scheme’s 700 members.
