The surge in supermarket orders has had a knock-on effect for a Nottingham headquartered food packaging firm and now it is offering up to 25 temporary jobs.

The Wilkins Group, a carton packaging supplier, has been classed a 'key Industry' following the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, and so is now taking on extra staff on temporary contracts to ensure its role in the retail food industry chain is fulfilled.

Justin Wilkins, sales and marketing director at the , said: "Due to the current global and domestic situation and increased demand, the business is urgently seeking skilled operators from the printing industry.

"These contracts will be temporary but may turn into permanent roles dependent on future circumstances."

The announcement comes as Tesco, Asda, Aldi, and Lidl said they would hire thousands of staff after huge demand saw shoppers clearing shelves.

The Wilkins Group operates within the textile market from sites in China, Romania, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka but its food packaging operations are firmly based at its Nottingham HQ.

The business has 294 staff in the 海角视频 and deals with major supermarkets to produce items such as ready meal cartons and packaging for confectionery, pastries, quiches, sausage rolls and ice cream.

It reached a group turnover of 拢36 million last year.

Earlier this week Mick Searle, chief executive of the Packaging Federation, and Martin Kersh, executive director of the Foodservice Packaging Association, both reiterated packaging鈥檚 huge role to play as the 海角视频 goes into lockdown.

鈥淧ackaging is extremely important in circumstances like this,鈥 said Searle. 鈥淧eople need to get what they want and safely. We are in totally uncharted territory鈥

Mr Wilkins added: 鈥淲e are all working in uncharted waters, and we would really love to give temporary contracts to those most affected by the job cuts announced in the last few weeks.鈥