A hybrid market of changing responses to hygiene, hybrid products, sustainability, and price. Following the acquisition of Star Tissue UK, Tim Vormweg, Director Group Communications at WEPA, outlines the company’s direction in the UK. Report by Helen Morris, Senior Editor.
In January 2024, Germany-headquartered WEPA Group increased its presence within the UK and across the European tissue market by acquiring Blackburn, Lancashire-based hygiene paper provider Star Tissue UK. The site is now part of the company’s business unit “WEPA Professional” and operates under the name WEPA Professional UK, with a converting capacity of 27,000tpy producing high-quality tissue products. Customers, WEPA says, also benefit from an international production network of the WEPA Group in the UK and 12 other European locations.
Within the UK, the WEPA Group also has a mill in Bridgend, Wales, which produces for the company’s Consumer business unit with a yearly production capacity of 115,000 tonnes. With an integrated facility, the site houses a paper machine, seven converting lines, and a state-of-the-art water treatment plant.
Targets across the UK will be to deliver “superior products with minimum impact on the environment, whilst also ensuring superior softness and bulk.” A range of pack formats and converting options, including the ability to produce different core sizes, are a focus. Lotioned bathroom tissue and printed kitchen towels are also manufactured, with a wide variety of options available from entry level to premium ranges.
With the economic and health conditions of the past few years, Tim Vormweg, Director Group Communications at WEPA, says the company’s growth strategy will continue to be innovative: “WEPA is committed to the UK market and further developing its business in the tissue market. We will show this commitment by introducing innovations, such as our product range made from recycled cardboard. Furthermore, we offer more and more packages containing maxi rolls – this reduces transports and increases efficiency on the shelves.”
The acquisition of Star Tissue UK “underlines our strategic commitment for further growth in the UK’s professional hygiene market,” he adds. “This is based on a strong product and brand portfolio tailored to the demands of the local market and a strong sustainability strategy.”
Clearly, he says, the company is seeing that sustainability plays “an increasing role” – both in product specification evolution, but also in the entire value chain: “Sustainability is our strategic focus. This is supported by retailers and their focus on sustainability, as well as by consumer demands, and we want to further increase the awareness for sustainable hygiene paper. We expect a growing number of hybrid products to enter the market – this is hygiene paper made from a mixture of fresh and recycled fibres. Even though in the Consumer’s business the market share of 100% recycled products is still comparably low, we see still a growing demand in this category.”
On the other hand, he says that in the company’s Professional sector, the business is seeing “substantial demand” for recycled products: “We expect a growing number of beige products made from recycled cardboard in the future, given the sustainability advantages of unbleached, recycled material. With beige products customers and consumers can actively contribute to circular economy.”
The product range made from recycled cardboard is “a high-quality, very soft and sustainable hygiene paper solution, since recycled fibres have an at least 70% better environmental footprint in contrast to wood-based fresh fibres. “For V-fold handtowels, we increased the compression and thereby the palletisation efficiencies, which enables 50% more paper per pallet. This makes our logistics more efficient.”
Reducing plastic is also on the company’s agenda: “By increasing the number of sheets on our hygiene paper rolls, a package contains more paper which in the end leads to less packaging material needed in total.”
“When it comes to energy the focus is not only improving the efficiency and reducing consumption, but also on using less carbon intensive sources and reducing emissions.”
Vormweg adds: “For WEPA, the UK is a growth market that offers many opportunities for us, and this is why we actively invest in the market.”
Changing trends over the past few years have resulted in awareness of the “everyday product” that is hygiene paper “increasing substantially”. “Following the outbreak of Covid-19, we saw that buying habits had changed,” he says. “In the following years, we have also seen wars, the energy crisis, inflation, all of which have led consumers to make more conscious buying decisions. Nowadays, there is a greater focus on private label products as well as on promotions and value offering (e.g. longer rolls, double rolls in the bathroom tissue segment).”
Within public washrooms, WEPA has experienced that more people now prefer drying their hands with paper towels. “This is also reflected by a greater interest in paper towels and dispensers of our Professional customers,” he says.
“Generally, the UK market shows organic growth. In the bathroom tissue segment the market is still dominated by standard products. Consumers are looking for the best value for their money, thus longer roll and bigger pack sizes are gaining share.”
