FDBusiness.com

In a key strategic move designed to increase capacity and boost production efficiencies, Mercury Packaging and CPS Flexible have merged to form a major flexible packaging company with a combined turnover of some £16 million and forecasted growth of 25% over a three-year period.

The newly-formed BRC (British Retail Consortium) accredited business will operate under holding company, Quicksilver, but retain the Mercury Packaging and CPS Flexible brand names. Primarily targeting the food, publishing, retail and security markets, it will run from the existing state-of-the-art production facilities located in Nottingham and Leicester.

Backed by a dynamic senior management team, the merged company offers high performance production equipment, including six extruders, three print presses and a range of converting machines, as well as lamination and in-house design capabilities.

Tony Stanger, new Group Chairman, comments: “This transaction brings together two highly complementary and long-established organisations to create a new, more powerful flexible packaging company designed to further enhance our expertise and capabilities.”

CPS Flexible has extensive extrusion capability for the production of both polythene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) films to complement their print and bag-making functions. Mercury Packaging does not offer extrusion but boasts printing, conversion and lamination competencies.

“The individual businesses have been very successful and achieved sustainable levels of profit but capacity was starting to become an issue and a potential obstacle to future growth,” adds Tony. “It became evident very quickly that there were several areas for synergy between the companies.

“Despite both operating within the food and publishing markets, there are very few common customers and significant areas where Mercury Packaging could benefit from CPS Flexible’s extrusion capabilities. Likewise, the former’s lamination equipment will be an advantage for CPS Flexible.”

Going forward, Mercury Packaging’s Chairman, Tony Stanger, will take on the role for the group, and CPS Flexible’s current Production Director, Simon Rose, will become Group Managing Director.

Other key group roles include Ray Franks as Sales Director, David Mallison as Finance Director and John Fisher as Production Manager.

Group MD, Simon Rose, says: “This is an extremely positive move for our businesses with customers benefitting from the two companies’ combined 65 years’ experience in the flexible packaging industry. Plus both organisations have a strong sense of shared vision and values, highlighting a natural synergy in terms of what we do and how we do it.”