A company which makes plastic moulds for the food packaging industry is diversifying into the manufacture of plastic wrapping using recycled bottles in a move it hopes will add £10m annually to sales. Gateshead-based Thermodynamix Thermoforming Specialist Services (TDX) last month installed a German-made £1.5m thermo-forming packaging production line creating 20 new jobs. The company, which started life seven years ago designing and manufacturing production tooling for food packaging makers, says the equipment should add £5m to annual turnover in the next two years. And TDX, which currently has annual sales of £3m and employs 50 staff, plans to install a second production line by the end of the year. Sales director Mark Prinn said the company had a ready-made market for the extruded plastic sheeting from its existing client base of packaging manufacturers which buy its plastic moulds. "We have existing relationships with those customers and have an advantage in that we know their end-customers' needs." Around half of the plastic sheeting, which will be transformed into plastic containers, ranging from yoghurt pots to salad trays, will end up on Marks & Spencer shelves via Sedgefield-based packaging manufacturer Reynolds Food Packaging. TDX estimates that for every 4,000 tonnes of packaging it makes from its new production line, 6,000 tonnes of carbon - equivalent to emissions produced by 3,821 round trip flights from London Heathrow to Orlando - will be saved that otherwise could have been expected to be emitted through conventional production. Mr Prinn said: "It is a rapidly developing market. I would hesitate to say that all of the production [from the first production line] will be sold by the end of this year but certainly within 24 months." Managing director Harry Reed, who set up the company with operations director Neil Atkinson seven years ago, said: "The plastic packaging industry has become much more environmentally aware. "The customer base that we will supply with our plastic sheet is
under increasing pressure to manufacture plastic packaging that is more sustainable and environmentally friendly than has been the case." Phil Empson, senior partner at Yorkshire Bank in Newcastle, which provided £950,000 of asset financing for the first production line, said: "We're always on the lookout to become involved with innovative and entrepreneurial local trading businesses." The company also received a £190,000 grant last July from One NorthEast on the promise the investment would safeguard 11 jobs as well as create an additional 17 posts. | 
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