A family-owned Stroud packaging company that has been operating for more than 60-years has been bought by an international industry specialist.

Olympic Varnish Company Ltd have been acquired for an undisclosed sum by Shropshire-based SIRANE.

The Brimscombe-based firm are a manufacturer of board products for the bakery, fish and cake-making industries.

Key products include salmon boards, cake boards, U-cards, sleeves and sandwich boards. They supply throughout the UK.

Simon Balderson, Sirane MD, said: "This acquisition is a strategic step for Sirane to enhance and improve our product offering into new areas of the food industry.

"In particular it supports our continued development into plastic replacement technology for all types of food.

"Olympic's product range is based around fibrous board products, many of which are compostable and recyclable.

"We plan to extend this product range, using our Earth Packaging banner, into all areas of food packaging which currently use plastic-coated and laminated boards."

The Olympic Group had been trading on the Dockyard site for more than 60 years, and had been owned by members of the founding family.

While some sections of the business had stopped trading, the food boards division is still very much thriving.

Sirane has ambitious plans to grow the business and expand the portfolio of products produced at what will be now called Sirane Stroud.

An eco-friendly and plastic-free sandwich pack is one of the developments which the acquisition will allow Sirane to manufacture.

The packs - branded as Earthwedge - will combine recyclable boards with our plastic-free coated papers.

"The result is a sandwich pack, with a window, which gives the required barrier, but which is completely free of plastic," added Simon Balderson.

"Earthwedge will remove a lot of unnecessary plastic from supermarket shelves.

"This will be the first of many innovative new products which combine existing Sirane technology with the board-processing operations at Olympic.

Sirane is an innovative packaging development-to-manufacture company, with expertise in absorbency and material science.

Specialisms include bags and pouches, absorbent products, shelf-life extension and dual-ovenable products.

It has four main divisions: food packaging; medical & healthcare; horticultural and industrial.

The company is based in Telford, Shropshire, with additional manufacturing in Guadalajara, Mexico, Wroclaw in Poland and Moscow.