German-owned Progroup, headquartered in Landau, Rhineland-Palatine, one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of containerboard and corrugated board and Lincolnshire-based packaging manufacturer Krystals have started to operate a new £20 million packaging park in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.

It combines Progroup’s high-tech corrugated board plant with the specialist packaging production that Krystals provides. Production and IT systems are interconnected, considerably increasing the level of flexibility and efficiency in the production processes.

The corrugated board formats which Progroup produces are transported directly to the Krystals production facilities on time and with the precise quantity required via a transport bridge. This makes Krystals Progroup’s first packaging park customer integrated at the same site in the UK.

Jürgen Heindl, CEO of Progroup, said: “We are absolutely delighted that we are now able to successfully continue Progroup’s story in Ellesmere Port with our long-standing partner Krystals. The packaging park will enable us to continue to grow together”.

“The investments of more than £90 million in constructing our new high-tech corrugated sheetfeeder plant and in the packaging park demonstrate how committed we are to the site in Ellesmere Port over the long term” added Jürgen Heindl.

Progroup has been operating its corrugated sheetfeeder plant, one of the industry’s most efficient and best-performing plants, in Ellesmere Port since January 2019. The site is able to manufacture over 200,000 tonnes of corrugated board per year, all produced from recovered paper.

In the future, the corrugated board which is conveyed via the bridge link to Krystals will require neither means of transport nor any packaging, saving around 1,800 truck journeys in the next 12 months alone.