Canadian film extruder Direct Plastics Group has purchased a printing and converting facility owned by Performance Packaging Inc. and plans to move its entire operation to the site.
The Jan. 31 deal gives Direct Plastics a facility in Orangeville, Ontario, that Performance Packaging had owned for 12 years. The purchase will bolster Direct Plastics' converting operations to complement its film, bag and roll-stock work, said Kirk Stover, sales and marketing director for the Brampton, Ontario-based company.
The move will begin Feb. 14 and be completed within 18 months, he said in a Feb. 1 phone interview.
Although Performance Packaging's 63,000-square-foot building in Orangeville is close in size to Direct Plastics' Brampton plant, it is laid out more efficiently. Direct Plastics will own the Orangeville plant, whereas it had leased the Brampton plant, Stover said.
The purchase, for an undisclosed price, includes an eight-color printing press (Direct Plastics' second), a six-color press, a monolayer film extruder and two wicketed bag machines, Stover said. The company also gains Performance's customer base served by the Orangeville plant.
Privately held Direct Plastics, founded in 1988, will rehire 33 Performance Packaging employees, giving Direct Plastics a total of about 125 workers, Stover said.
Performance Packaging is the Canadian unit of Lyndhurst, N.J.-based film extruder Sigma Plastics Group. The unit will retain an industrial film operation in Cowansville, Quebec, and a separate warehouse in Orangeville, Sigma Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Alfred Teo said Jan. 31.
Performance Packaging will expand the Cowansville plant later this year and add capacity. The business produces about 40 million pounds of film a year, making coextruded and monolayer PE film for industrial applications and dry-cleaning garment bags.
Meantime, Teo announced another, unrelated move by Sigma. The company has bought the remaining 50 percent interest in a Compton, Calif., film and bag plant it had co-owned with Vanguard Plastics Inc. of Farmers Branch, Texas.