A total of 90 jobs will be lost when Nampak Liquid Foods (Station Road, Woburn Sands, GB - Milton Keynes MK17 8SE; www.plysu.com) closes one of its UK plants, at Kiln Farm, Milton Keynes, at the end of September. Kiln Farm was formerly the base of the BlowMocan operation before it was acquired by Nampak in 1994 and has been a major source of blow moulded HDPE containers for the dairy industry. Its closure has been brought about by a decline in business, largely attributable to ´hole through the wall´ factories directly feeding to the dairy industry.

The factory is scheduled to close at the end of September, with business transferred to the plant at Newport Pagnell site, where there is said to be a better layout for maximising production efficiencies. Some 25 jobs will be created at Newport Pagnell as a result of the Kiln Farm closure. However, Nampak Liquid Foods itself is benefiting from the UK´s move to“´hole through the wall” blow moulding activities through a GBP 8m investment at a dairy in north London. It is in discussions also with other dairy companies.

The BlowMocan business was founded in the late 1970s and sold to Plysu in 1996. Plysu became part of Nampak ( www.nampak.co.za) in 1999, helping to make it the world´s fourth largest packaging manufacturer.