Derry firm's plan may create 50 jobs

The Derry-based packaging group Perfecseal is believed to have reached agreement with the IDB over a multi-million expansion project which is expected to create up to 50 new jobs. Perfecseal, which makes sterile packaging for use by manufacturers of medical equipment, has been negotiating with the IDB for several months over a possible £4 million sterling investment at its plant on the Springtown Industrial Estate. It is thought that agreement concerns the takeover of an IDB advance factory on the estate.

Perfecseal was set up by a Derry businessman, Mr Alan McClure, in 1984. By April last year, when it was acquired by the Bemis Corporation, the largest flexible packaging company in north America, it was operating from a plant of 70,000 square feet, and had a turnover of nearly £12 million. As part of Bemis, it is now a worldwide organisation with six manufacturing facilities in locations in the United States and in Puerto Rico.

The Derry plant employs over 130 people, and more than 95 per cent of its output is sold overseas. It has been a winner of the Queen's Award for Export Achievement twice in the past five years.

Around 20 per cent of Perfecseal's workforce in Derry are graduates. In a business which depends to a large extent on new technology, the company has been keen to set up a research and development facility as part of its worldwide operation.

Last week, the company was host to 26 of Perfecseal's top executives, who were in Northern Ireland for a strategic planning review - the first time such a meeting has been held outside the United States.