At full capacity, the facility, located north of Colombo, will produce over 1m cartons a day mostly for food but also for clothing for supermarkets and other big retailers in Britain and mainland Europe.
Kit includes two six-colour KBA presses and Bobst finishing kit. Two more KBA machines will be commissioned in the next few months at the 100-staff plant aiming for £19m turnover in five years.
The plant offers European customers a full service including print, die cutting, window patching, laminating, gluing and heat seal capabilities. The site offers CTP reprographics and plate making.
Products include hangtags, PFL, woven and adhesive labels, printed folding box board cartons, rigid boxes, PET boxes, polyprop cascades, plastic hooks, polybags and decorative metal boxes.
UK managing director Jonathan Harris-Lowe told PN: "This is a mould breaker: we want to operate European staffing levels and are committed to sustainable, environment-friendly manufacturing.
"The plant will use FSC and PEFC accredited suppliers and continually develop packaging design to reduce the amount of packaging required and wastage.
"A major difference between us and competitors is the group owns its production sites and can therefore control quality, costs and delivery. We can influence and implement change at source."
Expo Industries Group, which has a sales, marketing, design and warehousing base in Derby has three factories in Sri Lanka and operations in Bangladesh and India.
Cartons make up around 10% of the group's turnover of £16m, the remainder coming from construction and manufacturing of garment machine spare parts and arts and cosmetics brushes.
"As a major packaging supplier in the UK we need an environment that meets contemporary expectations and that's why the group has invested so heavily in the factory," said Harris-Lowe.
