In April of this year, Matthew Botting was appointed as the General Manager of our Exeter plant. We sat down with Matthew to find out a little bit more about him and his visions for the future of BoxWay Packaging Group.
What are your visions for BoxWay?
We need to continue to strengthen our brand, continue to develop our people, continue to grow, and invest in our future business. I want BoxWay Exeter to be seen as the ‘go to’ sheet plant in the South West, we have great equipment, we are flexible, approachable, have a great team, we have great customers and we need to continue to build on this.
Can you tell me a little bit about your career journey in packaging?
I joined the industry in Feb 1998 working as the local sales rep for Smurfit Kappa Barnstaple. I spent 15 years at Smurfit Kappa in various roles ending up as Sales Manager for 2 plants (Barnstaple & Gosport). I joined VPK in 2014 as Key Account Manager for their then new site in Wellington helping to develop their sales in the South West. In 2017 I moved to South West Packaging an independent sheet plant based in Dorset working as Sales Manager. I spent the last 6 years working for these guys, this role took my back to my routes working for a well invested creative sheet plant, before I joined BoxWay in January this year as Sales Manager to then taking on the role as General Manager in April.
What are your favourite hobbies?
Running, Rugby and most things outdoors!
If your son had a spare cardboard box, what would he make out of it?
Definitely a bin lorry called Dennis!
Do you ever give ‘assistance’ on school projects?
No, I haven’t but would consider it! I used to teach teenagers sailing and I am also a qualified running coach.
How have the recent investments impacted BoxWay and what they can offer to clients?
The recent investments at both Exeter and Peterlee are helping us strengthen our position in the marketplace. Firstly, having modern efficient and reliable equipment is great, but more importantly it has increased our offering to the marketplace for short run digital print which can be used to help brand launches and for smaller businesses. It produces high quality printed packaging in small volume helping them get their product to market in great printed packaging. On the other end of the scale, we have the new 5 colour printer/rotary die cutter which gives us the opportunity to enter the high quality flexo print market.
What packaging trends do you predict will be popular in 2023?
Before we know it 2023 will be over! This year has been different as the e-commerce marketplace has been a lot quieter. The competition has been stronger, pricing has been key, and our investment of new machinery has helped us keep a sharp pencil!
I’m currently gazing at my crystal ball to see what 2024 will bring!
We are delighted to see Matthew in the role of General Manager at Exeter. Our customers and BoxWay will thrive under his leadership.