Coveris upgrades cartonboard division with £3m investment

Packaging giant Coveris has invested £3m in its Cambridgeshire-based cartonboard division.

The international packaging manufacturer invested in a raft of new machinery, site refurbishment, upgrades to existing equipment and a new staff training programme for 2017. 

The new machinery, which includes a six-colour Komori GLX-640 with coater, two Jagenberg Diana glue lines, a Heiber & Schröder window patcher and an Iberica cutter-creaser, should all be operational by summer 2017. A spokesman for Coveris said that relocation and refurbishment of other equipment would make the business more efficient.

The cartonboard division has three sites in Cambridgeshire, two in St Neots and one in Wisbech. Site modernisation will mostly be focused on improving the facilities at St Neots and refurbishing its creative design centre.

The spokesman said that once work is complete, Coveris will be offering a better service and experience for its customers, increased capacity, more operational reliability and consistency, improved efficiencies from streamlined production and improved quality of its new product development programme. 

Coveris paper division operations director Michael Marshall said: “The announcement of the investment plan for our board division marks an exciting time for Coveris. From site modernisation to installation of new machinery and staff training, the investment plan encompasses the whole board business.”

The cartonboard division manufactures cartonboard packaging for a variety of sectors in the food industry. It also has CAD and platemaking facilities. 

Coveris also announced it will be revealing the first in a series of “packaging developments launched in 2017” at the Pro2Pac trade show, Excel Arena, London.

Coveris has 16 sites in the UK and manufactures a range of packaging products. Last September, it invested in a Converter 530 series 3 to increase capacity of its reclose labelling division at one of its UK sites.

In March 2016, its Imagenet graphics division acquired Rivendell Europe and the previous year it boosted its global footprint by acquiring New Zealand-based flexible packaging company Elldex Packaging Solutions.