PFF Group

PFF Group was founded in 1993 by husband-and-wife team Andy and Michelle Bairstow, who started out making plastic packaging for cosmetics, toiletries, and gifts. From Keighley in West Yorkshire, the business grew through what the company describes as long hours, risk-taking, and steady investment in equipment and facilities, eventually picking up a string of packaging industry design awards along the way.

Over time, PFF shifted its focus toward food packaging specifically, becoming one of the UK’s largest independent manufacturers in that space, serving supermarkets, multinational food manufacturers, and food service and fresh produce companies with fully recyclable, sustainable packaging. The company built out an in-house innovation center alongside its manufacturing, letting it handle everything from concept and design through to production, decoration, and delivery.

Growth also came through acquisition. In November 2021, PFF bought Sirap UK, the British arm of Italian packaging group Sirap, based in Sedgefield and founded back in 1960. Group managing director Kenton Robbins called it a chance to combine two long-standing businesses and diversify PFF’s product range, with operations then spread across sites in Keighley and Washington, Tyne and Wear, and the business employing more than 250 people as a family-owned operation.

The story took a harder turn in October 2025, when PFF Group filed for administration. The business was quickly bought out, though, with Birmingham firm Coppice Alupack Ltd acquiring PFF and saving more than 200 jobs in the process, with the full team transferring across to Coppice.

Today, PFF continues operating under new ownership, still manufacturing rigid plastic food-grade packaging using both post-consumer waste and recyclable materials, serving the food and healthcare sectors across the UK. More than three decades after Andy and Michelle Bairstow started the company, its core product, sustainable, recyclable plastic packaging, remains much the same, even as the business behind it has changed hands.