Editor’s Interview
Forming a better future
Kingsmoor Packaging (KPL) is one of the UK’s leading bespoke thermoformed packaging specialists. Simon King met with KPL’s managing director, James Hill, to find out more about the company
B
ased in Somerset, Kingsmoor Packaging has been designing and manufacturing award winning bespoke and off-the- shelf plastic packaging for the food
industry since 1990.
With a AA grade BRC/IOP accreditation, KPL creates excellent quality products and always prides itself on maintaining a consistently high level of service.
Speaking at the company’s head office in Somerton, Somerset, James Hill, KPL’s managing director, said: “We manufacture food grade packaging solutions in APET, PP and HIPS – as well as RPET, which contains at least 50% post- consumer recycled waste and at least 30% industry recycled waste.
“With in-house tooling and design, operating in tandem with their state of the art modern production facilities, KPL is able to provide customers with a nimble, flexible and cost effective single source service.”
KPL is a privately-owned business still run by the Thomas family.
The business initially started as a distribution business that sold products into the airlines. Mr Hill said: “You could buy anything from a stainless steel teapot that you’d get in in-flight service to branded blankets and rotatable trays. “A lot of the little pots that you would get on the traditional in flight meal, we’d make that and, back in the day, before budget airlines, where the meal was still a very significant part of travel – we used to make a huge amount of little pots.” In the early stages, 90% of the businesses turnover was all to do with demand for its airline catering single-use products.
“As time evolved, with the advent of budget airlines, a lot of the ancillaries that went with that type of travelling, like the meal, started to get quashed,” Mr Hill said.
Mr Hill joined the business in 2007 as business development manager. Prior to Kingsmoor, he was an area sales manager at RPC Containers in
Bristol and Corby,
He took over as managing director in 2015. “I knew the Thomas family and as investors and owners, they’re brilliant,” he said. “I get full autonomy. I see them once a quarter and they’re very hands off. It’s a really nice relationship and they’ve always been very family and staff focused. “We started really pushing more into retail areas, working for retail processors, which includes ranges for salads and sandwiches, cakes and desserts, cooked and chilled meats and pâté.” KPL has 34 full-time employees and its turnover reached £5.5 million in the financial year to March 31, 2023.
Mr Hill said: “We manufacture using five WM TFT thermoforming machines. KPL is fast paced in our ability to turn very quickly; we can get tooling to market very quickly, we can get designs and patterns made very quickly.
“In FMCG, our customers want things very quickly, and that’s where we come in.” Just before Covid, KPL started an investment programme to double the size of its design office and tool room.
While competitors may subcontract work, Mr Hill
said the beauty of KPL is that, aside from extrusion, KPL is in full control of the whole process. In addition to its work in the food industry, KPL also does some horticultural work, and it’s trying to break more into the automotive industry. “We’re still 90% food products, which includes free to go, convenience, desserts, confectionery, meat and pâté, and then we’ve got the airline side of things as well,” Mr Hill said.
“Food to go is easily feed the biggest area, for short shelf-life products, which are typically merchandised at the front of stores.” KPL recently rebranded and launched a new logo, with a strapline ‘forming a better future’. Mr Hill said: “We’re very aware of the pressures plastic faces; the good news for us is that carbon is being more discussed now.
“Despite what people might say about plastic, as a possible general pollutant, its carbon footprint is really good against some other substrates of packaging, like glass and paper.”
KPL has recently started a solar energy project. By this time, next year, it’ll be producing 50% of its own energy from solar.
“The overall investment is more than £500,000;
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July/August 2023
www.convertermag.com
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