Yesterday, Wednesday 21 October, the Belgian VPK Group signed an agreement to acquire the British corrugated packaging manufacturer and designer Encase. Encase has two integrated corrugated packaging plants located in England and a converter in Scotland. The company will be integrated into the group's UK corrugated activities.
With this new acquisition, VPK Packaging UK will operate six plants with six corrugators and the new entity will have annual sales of packaging and corrugated sheeting in excess of £200 million or ?221 million.
VPK has invested heavily in the UK, as in other countries, in the corrugated board division in recent years. The Wellington site has benefited from major machine investments with the installation of a BP Agnati Quantum corrugator in 2015, a Bobst 6-color flexo machine with rotary die-cutting in 2017 and a new Turbox folder-gluer from Bahmueller in 2019.
And more recently, in April 2020, the Belgian group acquired a majority stake in Corrboard, one of the leading suppliers of corrugated sheetboard in the UK.
The group also has international ambitions. To strengthen its presence in the world, it has renamed its name its corrugated board division, which is now called VPK Packaging . VPK Packaging thus replaces the Ondulys, Rigid and Peterson brands, distributed respectively in France, England and Ireland, and in the Nordic countries.
VPK employs more than 6,200 people in 65 locations in 20 countries and has a turnover of 1.5 billion euros.
