James Cropper shares surge

Colourform: sustainable packaging option for brands
Colourform: sustainable packaging option for brands

Shares in James Cropper rose dramatically this week on the back of its latest results and hopes for its PaperGard self-sanitising paper and sustainable packaging products.

The venerable Cumbrian paper maker recently posted interim results where it made a loss, but also cut debts and said it was seeing signs of recovery.

At the end of last week the share price was 950p, and it had jumped by 30.5% to 1,240p on Wednesday. The 52-week high is 1,480p, low: 580p.

Analyst Robert Sanders at Shore Capital published a research report on the business last week.

“They have reinstated forecasts which is always a positive as far as the market is concerned,” Sanders said.

“It feels like they’ve weathered the storm and the uncertainty.”

He also said that the sustainability agenda being pursued by major brands should be “helpful” for Cropper’s Colourform moulded fibre packaging range that can replace plastics, while the Covid-19 situation is likely to result in growing demand for PaperGard anti-microbial papers.

The PaperGard product also featured in a recent BBC article, ‘How paper is helping to fight Covid-19’.