NI Assembly member concerned for 300 medical packaging jobs

Perfecseal, which is part of US firm Bemis, manufactures a range of medical and pharmaceutical packaging products and expressed its concerns the expansion to the Glassdon waste facility could affect the sterile environment it needs.

The BBC reported that local Sinn Fein MLA Martina Anderson had asked for a meeting with environment minister Edwin Poots to discuss the planning application and said it was “unacceptable” the situation had dragged on for so long.

“Perfecseal has already halted recruitment while the situation remains unresolved and we now face the prospect of losing 300 jobs from a city, which is still reeling from other major redundancies in recent weeks,” she said.

Glassdon is reported as saying that any risk to Perfecseal’s sterile integrity was “negligible”.

Perfecseal managing director Keith McCracken told the Belfast Telegraph in May: “A superbly clean environment – inside and outside our factory – is of crucial importance to companies such as ours.

“We don’t want to block the expansion plans of any other business, but it’s in everyone’s interests that the authorities act swiftly to find a more appropriate location for the proposed recycling transfer facility.”

Neither Perfecseal nor Glassdon were available for comment when contacted by Packaging News this morning.

Bemis has been in the headlines in recent months for its $1.2bn acquisition of Alcan Packaging Food Americas. Click here for more on the Alcan Packaging deal.