BoxWay has bought three UK plants from Saica with plans to target ecommerce and the ‘challenger brands’.
A start up company has acquired three corrugated conversion plants from the multinational Saica. BoxWay Packaging has queried sites in Exeter, Telford and Peterlee giving it a spread from the south west to north east.
BoxWay Packaging has been created by former Saica executive Andrew Woollard with the aim of serving ‘challenger brands’ that are emerging and demanding shorter runs and sustainable packaging.
This has led to a scarcity of corrugated packaging for these start ups and ecommerce companies.
“If we have the right quality, a wider capability, act faster, demonstrate more agility and have the capacity, it will yield growth,” says Woollard.
Investment is on the cards to increase print and die cutting capabilities, but nothing is specified currently. Saica itself has inkjet options, though in the UK only for sample quantities. Its Digital Print facility is housed at Saica’s Manchester PM-11 site, producing low volume prototypes and sample quantities ahead of full scale production at another of its plants.
Investment will “improve our capacities and capabilities,” says Woollard. “It will focus on areas of print, die cutting and speciality gluing.” He adds that both flexo and digital print will feature, but that it will remain about outer packaging across ecommerce, retail and transit packaging. “The focus will be corrugated and composite packs involving a number of adjacent products,” he says.
Equally the focus on reshaping the offer to the market will be built around design led product development for customers; measures to improve productivity; online connectivity to enable a faster turnaround and investment in the sakes and training to help the emerging companies with design and marketing strategies.
He explains: “BoxWay is totally committed to supporting current and new customers by providing an independent and entrepreneurial approach to likeminded businesses on a national basis. With the help of some exciting investment plans our ambition is to grow into new markets and alongside challenger brands that have evolved from the pandemic.
“We are in a very fortunate position to have an excellent regional spread across the three sites to deliver our services on a nationwide basis and respond to current and future customer needs as and when required.”
Saica will ease the transition of the operations into the new business, while operating across four areas: Saica Natur, its waste management arm; Saica Paper, producing recycled paper for corrugated packaging; Saica Pack for corrugated packaging and Saica Flex, a flexible packaging group. Prior to this deal, Saica operated from 25 sites in the UK, including plants previously Americk Packaging which it acquired five years ago.
Article published in Print Business
