Food and drink, tools and packaging

The East Midlands of England has something of a cluster of businesses involved with packaging. We visited Measom Freer near Leicester just a few days before meeting Paccor at its site near Mansfield, near Nottingham, and its near-neighbour, R&D/Leverage, who we have known and encountered over many years and in many different places.

Paccor (Mansfield) UK Ltd, to give it its full title, was founded as Closures Ltd, just over 20 years ago, by a pair of entrepreneurs, who had a clear vision: to build the company as far as they could as entrepreneurs and to sell it on to others, who would have the resources to take it further. Things worked out pretty well. The original owners sold in 2012 to private equity investors and the company was sold again, in 2018, to Lindsay Goldberg Vogel, the European arm of USA investment company Lindsay Goldberg. There is a second UK Paccor plant, in Chester-le-Street, County Durham, in the NE of England.

The Mansfield plant’s speciality is caps, focused very much on the dairy industry. Milk and dairy is highly commoditised so there is always a challenge to profitability. Paccor has risen to that by investing in automation and making sure that its systems and processes are as free of waste as possible – and in producing a cap that is pretty much unique in its field. It is the go-to cap in the UK dairy industry; so much so that, if it stopped producing, dairy supplies would pretty much stop within a week and the company would be on the Evening News.

Paccor is also investing in recyclability and environmental sustainability, of products and processes. UK Managing Director Steve Naylor along with his plant manager talked to us and took us on a tour of the highlights of the Mansfield factory – its new rHDPE operation in particular.

Just round the corner and a few hours later, it was time to renew our acquaintance with R&D/Leverage UK’s Managing Director, Alan Tolley. It has been four years since we last met and a lot of water has passed under the bridge, in that time. The purchase of a new unit has extended the total area of the facility to around 60,000 square feet (5600 sq m). it was actually acquired in 2020, in the first flush of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, so it was a bold move by the company.
“We bought it to future-proof the company,” said Alan Tolley. “We’re just putting in equipment now. We bought it because we knew we would need it, fairly soon, and we didn’t want to have to go looking for another complete site, or premises a few miles away.”

Investment in the future has been a continuing theme at R&D/Leverage. None of its machinery is more than five years old; our tour included a visit to the inspection and quality assurance laboratory, which has seen an upgrade and extension to its range of equipment. For Alan, the objective has been to be able to offer a complete, one-stop source and solution for design, prototyping, testing and first-runs, up to 10,000. The company has been very successful and enjoyed its best year ever in 2020, with revenues up 40% over 2019.
“That was an aberration. Everyone wanted hand sanitiser and Covid-related equipment. What I am pleased about is that, last year, we still showed double-digit growth compared with 2019,” Alan said. Amazingly, he will soon be marking 55 years in the plastics industry. His enthusiasm is undimmed and infectious, as he talks animatedly about work being done in the Product Solutions Lab and how the company used technology to overcome travel bans, lockdowns and furloughs to ensure that clients still got what they wanted, when they needed it, on time and in full.
“The good thing is, we had no down days. We managed to get through with nearly all our suppliers, and to find replacements for those that decided, for whatever reason, to shut down,” he said. His pride in the achievement and the workforce and relationships that made it possible is evident. “Really, Covid didn’t have a massive impact on us. Overall, our experience has been pretty positive. We know there were winners and losers; we’re just happy to be the right side of the line.”

Yours

Ruari McCallion
Editor-at-Large