FDBusiness.com

A £1.2m investment in machinery will enable leading fresh food packaging manufacturer, Linpac, to produce a further 200 million expanded polystyrene (EPS) trays each year at its St Helens manufacturing site in the North West.

The investment will see existing extruders and thermoformers upgraded to further enhance the quality, environmental benefits and cost effectiveness of packs for Linpac customers.

Linpac is the largest manufacturer of EPS packaging solutions in the UK. St Helens is the company’s principle manufacturing site of EPS based products for the national and European foodservice markets, producing a range of innovative fast food boxes, trays and pizza discs.

Mick Wood, Linpac UK operations manager, said: “This major investment demonstrates our commitment to the foodservice market here and overseas. We are working towards a major upgrade to our manufacturing capabilities. This will ensure that we can offer our customers both market leading quality and increased capacity to service their needs. This will give us an increased competitive edge in an important market for Linpac.”

Once the upgrading of machinery is complete, St Helens will have four extrusion lines and 10 thermoformers in operation, supported by three reclaim units.

Conventional heating systems are in the process of being upgraded to infra-red systems via the addition new Ceramicx ovens on the site’s thermoformers. This is expected to reduce the overall carbon footprint of the LINPAC EPS product range due to the company achieving a 40% reduction in average energy consumption.

The investment is the largest to be made by LINPAC in the UK this year and will also boost the local economy by creating an additional 20 roles at the site.