BP Chemicals has sold its Performance Films business to Parkside Flexibles for an undisclosed sum. The deal effectively doubles Parkside's size.
The sale included manufacturing plants at Darton, UK, and Zlotow, Poland, which produce flexible polymer packaging for the European food and hygiene consumer markets.
Darton (now Parkside Performance Films) has some 350 staff and produces PE films for a wide variety of applications, and has total processing capacity of some 18,000t/year. The Zlotow site (now Parkside Poland), with a workforce of 85, produces a wide range of flexible packaging using several substrates for the Polish and Northern European markets and has an annual capacity of around 3,000t.
Parkside chief executive Geoffrey Stewart, says the acquisition is a perfect fit for his growing company and provides a much needed foothold in the European market. "We admire the impressive track record of Performance Films, and believe that the acquisition will enable both businesses to become leading players in the European flexible packaging industry," he affirms.
"Our business is becoming more international as large customers centralize their buying and spread their interests across the continent, and I believe that to achieve our ambition to become the best European source for flexible packaging, we must have operations abroad. This is the first piece of that jigsaw, and we are on the lookout for more."
Parkside was formed in 2000 from a management buyout of British Polythene Industries. The company's Normanton and Stoke operations produce stand-up pouches, shrink sleeves, laminates and plastics labels with gravure and flexo printing.
The £70M turnover Performance Films operation extrudes, laminates, prints and converts high performance PE based flexible packaging for a range of consumer products.
