More than 150 manufacturing jobs in the UK have been saved after BEWiSynbra (Solna / Sweden; www.bewisynbra.com) bought a minority stake in a new EPS manufacturer that emerged from the ashes of a pre-pack administration deal. The Swedish firm, which can produce 180,000 t/y of EPS beads, invested an unspecified sum into the company that was formed following a pre-pack administration deal involving Jablite (Belvedere / UK; www.jablite.co.uk) and its sister firm Styropack (Blackburn / UK; www.styropack.co.uk). The two businesses had suffered from a downturn in work caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and directors of both companies eventually called in the administrators.

Together with BEWiSynbra the new business is co-owned by chairman John Colley, managing director Richard Lee and finance director John Cooper. In 2015 Lee teamed up with Colley and two others to buy Styropack and Jablite from its then-owner, the Netherlands-based Synbra Group (see Plasteurope.com 05.05.2015). At the time of that deal Colley was working for Mobeus Equity Partners, which financed the management buyout.

BewiSynbra has around 1,300 employees. In 2019, it generated net sales of SEK 4.6 bn (EUR 444m).