Kite Packaging is an employee-owned business, based on the principle of partnership – with suppliers, employees and customers. It has seven sites across the UK and three different businesses that operate within the group.
The first, and longest-standing, is a Major Accounts division, in which high volume users are provided for with individual account managers, bespoke designs and full supply chain solutions. Secondly, Kite Online is the company’s successful e-commerce operation, and supplies over 2,500 lines of stock product (including some customisable options) to small and medium businesses. Finally, Kite Environmental Solutions represents the compliance side of the business, and specialises in helping with and running the Packaging Waste Regulations for clients – a legal requirement for many UK businesses.
Gavin Ashe, Managing Partner at Kite Packaging, spoke to Warehouse & Logistics News.
WLN – As the Packaging category experts, how has the category been performing in the last 12 months? What are the major trends and developments?
Overall the packaging category has done well; we in particular have had a record year in terms of turnover and made several investments to maintain our significant growth. One particular trend I have noticed is that as the economy has started to recover, customers are keener to use capital expenditure to put into automated processes, which streamline the packing line and improve volume throughput. Particularly in our Major Accounts business we are seeing more clients become more strategic about their packing operation, and wanting to reduce the amount of time each product takes to pick, pack and dispatch by using automatic or semi-automatic processes.
Of course the internet has always been a huge indicator of change in our industry; customers are now increasingly more concerned with protecting items from damage en-route to a customer, rather than display packaging in-store.
WLN – What are your core products and services: what are you best known for providing?
We provide industrial packaging to a wide range of industries and aim to cater to both large users who require bespoke packaging and service, as well as smaller businesses who simply need good quality product at a good price and quickly. “Industrial packaging” refers to materials that are designed to protect a product from a variety of things, including static, moisture, dust, shock and crushing. Of course we still do ‘pretty’ packaging, but our core business really lies in logistics and getting a product from A to B efficiently and effectively.
WLN – What developments or upgrades have you made to your core products and services in the last 12 months?
Our main focus for development has been in the world of automation, like I mentioned earlier this is becoming more important to customers and we want to offer the biggest and best range of options to suit a variety of industries. We are also constantly improving the website offering, and thanks to our fantastic Internal Sales team and the use of our review platform Trustpilot, we have added more product variety to the website based on our customer’s suggestions.
This has included expanding our postal mailing bag range for e-commerce businesses and small sellers, reducing our pack quantities to give customers better discounts on large orders and more flexibility, introducing more colour options to our gift packaging and more board grades to our box range.
The website is always upgrading, and we have included more bite-size information on product pages to help with the decision-making process, as well as informative demonstration videos, cost calculator tools and our product size finder which generates suitable packaging results based on the dimensions of your product.
WLN – What makes you the ‘go to’ supplier in your area of expertise?
We have worked with a huge variety of customers and are always willing to take on a challenge; nothing is too difficult for us to tackle. One particular USP of Kite is that each branch has its own Packaging Technologist – who will complete everything on the R&D side of things as well as all the relevant testing and certification (if required).
Customer satisfaction is hugely important to us, and our people are what keep customers coming back. For the online business our Internal Sales Advisors are all extremely knowledgeable and have been trained to go above and beyond for clients to help find what they’re looking for. For our Major Accounts we have branches all over the UK so an Account Manager is never too far away, regularly popping in for visits to ensure our customers feel supported.
WLN – Have you launched any new products and services in the past year? How are they performing?
Where to start?! At the beginning of the year we welcomed our S3 (Specialist Services and Solutions) division, who helped to launch Air Shock and Wrap & Hold. These are both Kite branded products and can be highly customised, although a standard range of Air Shock packs are available on our website. Wrap & Hold is our most innovative launch of the year; it is incredibly fast, reduces costs and materials, and can be completely customised from the machine height to the patented cardboard wraps.
More recently we launched the Enviropad – the fastest paper machine in the market, and throughout the year have injected the website with a completely new range of bagging, vacuum and shrink machines as well as extra heavy duty boxes, coloured mailing bags, book wrap mailers and Kite Mini Air accessories.
WLN – Which industry sectors are your customers in?
Our customers vary hugely, particularly online where we get a lot of ‘weird and wonderful’ queries – usually answered by our Packaging Doctor on the Kite blog! However in our branches we like to focus on automotive, aerospace, electronics, food, e-commerce, retail and healthcare.
WLN – Can you name some of your major customers and tell us about the work you do for them?
As you can imagine confidentiality is a huge issue for us so I couldn’t tell you a lot of our major customers. However it is fairly public that we have been the sole UK packaging supplier to Eaton Corporation for a number of years in the UK. It is a great relationship, and as well as winning their premier supplier award seven times in a row, the only company out of 50,000 suppliers to do so, we have also saved the company £1 million in total, by consolidating their packaging range and introducing new packing methods.
WLN – Can you tell us about your latest major projects, and what they involve?
We recently worked with a bathroom company who were using a variety of expensive materials to protect sinks and baths. These are ceramic and incredibly heavy, so are easy to chip and damage in transit. This customer in particular was seeing a damage rate of 10% which was proving to be very costly. We introduced Air Shock to the customer and produced some bespoke designs for them to test; they completed a trial order with a damage rate of zero which we were over the moon with.
WLN – Have you made any big moves recently in terms of investment in the business, recruitment and so on?
At the beginning of the year we officially opened Kite’s new building on our West Midlands site expansion, which was a £3.5 million investment, and welcomed our S3 division on board. More recently we have invested in a completely new site based in Kent to help deliver our high quality service to the businesses that reside there, and have announced the acquisition of a whopping two acre site in Swindon – this will be ready in February and will grow staff numbers by 30%.
WLN – What was your company’s single biggest achievement in the last year?
We have had a number of great wins this year, but I think a definitive one was having a record-breaking sales month since the company began back in 2001. I can’t disclose the number unfortunately but it was an amazing triumph, and made me incredibly proud of what we have built here at Kite.
WLN – What are your plans for 2015? Are you planning to bring out any more products or services, move into new markets or enter new countries?
Of course I can’t give too much away but we will be having another successful year and plan to grow our range on the website further, particularly in terms of machinery and equipment. The S3 team have done amazingly well this year, and our National Distribution Centre are always keen to try new products in the marketplace so we can give the best offering. We will also be rolling out an official charity programme in all our branches, and look to do more supplier partnerships, as we are always looking to collaborate on projects both nationally and internationally.
WLN – Are you exhibiting at any major trade shows this year?
Yes, we will be exhibiting at Packaging Innovations, Southern Manufacturing and Spring Fair in February, as well as Autumn Fair and PPMA Show in September. Exhibitions are usually where we launch new products so look out for our announcements leading up to these events.
WLN – What are your predictions for the industry in 2015?
The economy is still quite weak, but those who have invested well will grow as it recovers, and so we at Kite remain very optimistic.
WLN – What other headline news from your company can our readers look forward to reading about in Warehouse & Logistics News in 2015?
We’ll be doing lots of marketing around our new Swindon branch when it opens, and have a few new products that will be making headlines but you’ll have to watch this space!
Phone: 02476 420065
Email: sales@kitepackaging.co.uk
Twitter: @kitepackaging
Facebook: kitepackaging
LinkedIn: kite-packaging
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