Plastic Mouldings Northern Ltd (PMN) is an industry leader that ‘never stands still’. We caught up with Matthew Whittle, Sales Manager as he celebrates 10 years at the company that has innovation and collaboration at the heart of their operations.
Sales Manager
Matthew started with PMN fresh out of university, initially overseeing the e-commerce side of the business to looking after key accounts, new business and now holding responsibility for a quarter of the company’s turnover.
What does your role involve on a day-to-day basis?
The role is extremely varied from day to day due to the nature of the business, primarily working on new projects from initial contact through the full process from start to completion, involving design and development input, costing and project management. I am now becoming more involved in the day to day running of the company helping to bring through the next generation.
How would you explain the Plastic Mouldings Northern Ltd Culture?
We are a tight knit company with many long-standing staff members who all are given the freedom and flexibility to work off their own initiative to progress the company.
We have a can-do-attitude and never say no, there is no minimum or maximum order value, and we’ll always look to find a way to support customers. Relationships are key and we have established a strong and firm reputation regionally, nationally and internationally through building trust and quality of service delivery.
How does this culture assist your clients’ requirements?
We have a positive attitude and outlook, at PMN we always say that your headaches and problems are our speciality. We will always look to provide the most optimal and cost-effective packaging solution, sometimes even recommending other companies services if we feel it is the best option for the customer.
We love to inherit your problems, most of the time it is something we have seen and done many times before. This attitude, approach, and overall culture ensures a host of benefits for customers from cost-savings to enhanced efficiency and productivity.
Do you have direct contact with customers, and get involved developing solutions?
Yes, I am normally the customers main point of contact, so I am heavily involved from initial contact all the way through to project completion, utilising my wealth of knowledge and even greater knowledge I have behind me with the PMN team.
I see myself very much as the link between customer and supplier, ensuring all needs are met and maintained.
What makes Plastic Mouldings Northern Ltd unique in your industry?
The continuous investment in machinery and tooling is a real gamechanger in terms of enhancing our capabilities for even the most bespoke project. Another really strong USP is that we are not beholden to any one manufacturer, so we can go across the world if needed to find the right solution for customers.
We are both a plastic and packaging solution specialist, we are not just a vacuum forming manufacturer, a supplier of injection moulded products such as euro containers, pallets and pallet boxes or just a reconditioned pallet box expert – we are a full circle solutions supplier who is able to maximise our capabilities combining all aspects of the business to ensure a successful output, this makes us quite unique and well placed within the industry.
What solutions do Plastic Mouldings Northern Ltd offer customers?
The main output at PMN is the production of vacuum formed plastic parts, which sees the team supply high quality and often very intricate moulded parts to an array of industries.
Alongside the vacuum forming operation we are one of the UKs leading suppliers of plastic packaging solutions including euro containers across a wide range of industries. Storing over 100,000 products on an expansive site spanning 3 acres and 65,000 square feet of indoor storage, with efficiency and experience coming as standard. Alongside the euro containers we are also a leading supplier of folding pallet boxes, solid big box containers and plastic pallets as well as offering a range of accessories, including lids, trolleys and bespoke dividers, trays and inserts from the North East site.
What sectors do these clients work in?
We operate on a national and international scale and have built up a prominent reputation across the manufacturing sector globally. We work across an array of sectors from automotive and aerospace to the food industry and projects have seen us work with London Underground, McLaren, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Jaguar, JCB and BAE Systems.
Tell us about a recent project Plastic Mouldings Northern Ltd were involved with.
I had recently been awarded a large contract by a Global Automotive company, delivering in over 20 full trucks of bespoke sized Euro Containers for their new ASRS (Automated Storage and Retrieval System) at their German site.
The non-standard 1400×600 footprint size and additional key features, led to us investing in new tooling and producing a custom-made container that ticked all of the boxes. It highlighted our unique flexible and dynamic approach to business which sets us apart from the competition.
How can your solutions help?
Innovation and collaboration are at the heart of the company and the team have a strong reputation for revolutionising operations with innovative, design-led solutions saving time, resources and enhancing productivity.
A recent project saw us work with Yorkshire Stainless Ltd (YSL), following their investment in Kardex Shuttles. YSL needed a solution to enhance the operations as they had tried wooded and metal dividers to no avail. Through the project we utilised our innovative capabilities to supply lightweight plastic divider sets with the flexibility to have multiple configurations allowing a different set up in each tray.
The revolutionary solution led to a host of benefits including the creation of over 120 divider configurations to handle over 100k parts, the pick rate reduced from an average of 20 mins per part to less than 90 seconds and a reduced number of industrial units needed from 8 to 3, therefore saving on rent and rates.
What new services/solutions are you offering for 2023?
We are always innovating and investing and the recent investment in two new 5 Axis CNC machines brings a host of further solutions. The 5 Axis CNC machine is a ground-breaking piece of kit with its large trimming size capacity of 4mx2m makes us quite unique within the industry.
It uses computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) to create 3D objects from plastic material, this can be used for a variety of purposes, including prototyping, product development and manufacturing.
In addition, our recent investment in additional premises which took our site capacity to 3 acres ensures we also have the space and capacity to hold a lot of stock, making us very responsive to customer needs.
Plastic Mouldings Northern
01388 777 700
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