The former Vitasheet Group is now named Epsotech (Jülich-Kirchberg / Germany; www.epsotech.com). With the renaming, CEO Matthias von Buzay said the German company aims to have a uniform brand for expanding its polymer sheet business throughout Europe.

The rebranding affects the six companies in the rigid film and sheet division that form part of Epsotech Holding, and which are located in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the UK. The two French flexible film manufacturers Carolex (Longue Jumelles; www.carolex.fr) and Axipack (Ruitz; www.axipack.fr) are to be retained in the Plastic Films business unit, along with the brands of these same names.

Vitasheet – the former Thermoplastic Sheet business division of British Vita, which is now the Vita group (Manchester / UK; www.thevitagroup.com) – was acquired in 2014 by Deutsche Unternehmensbeteiligungen (Dubag, Munich / Germany; www.dubag.eu) – see Plasteurope.com of 30.05.2014.

In the meantime, the Munich turnaround specialists claim to have realigned the "cost-intensive management structure," reduced the "high operating losses of all the plants" and boosted synergies between the individual companies. The focus is now on high-margin rather than standard products. A supplier of thermoformable plastic sheets, polyolefin films and engineering polymers with some 600 employees, Epsotech generated sales of around EUR 185m in 2017. The company did not disclose any earnings figures.