Kite Packaging is a leading UK packaging supplier, known for its award-winning solutions, exceptional customer service and strong commitment to sustainability. With 10 sites nationwide, we support businesses of all sizes with packaging materials, pack room equipment and automation. We work closely with our customers to understand their challenges and find the best solutions for them, so that their operations can run smoothly, sustainably and without interruption.
Managing Director at Kite Packaging
Gavin Ashe, Managing Director at Kite Packaging spoke to Warehouse & Logistics News.
What are your best-known products and services?
Our best-known products include everyday essentials like boxes, tape, pallet wrap and void fill. Beyond these, ecommerce and postal packaging is also popular as it speeds up fulfilment and helps keep pace with increasing online demand.
Paper, sugarcane, recycled, and lighter materials are also high in demand as sustainability has become a must-have for businesses, especially with consumers preferring responsible practices. Because of this, our paper void fill, bubble wrap and tapes, 30% recycled films, and other environmentally friendlier products perform well.
Services like our pallet wrap audit also helps customers optimise their wrapping process. By assessing their current usage, we uncover any inefficiencies and wastage and recommend the ideal combination of machinery and film for their operation. This way, we help customers significantly reduce plastic consumption while cutting their product damage, waste and associated costs.
In what way does your company stand out from its competitors?
Our biggest differentiating factor is our employee share-ownership model. Every team member is personally invested in delivering the highest standards of service, because our success is built on the satisfaction of our customers. You can see this reflected in our customer feedback – we’ve amassed over 54,000 reviews and an ‘excellent’ rating on Trustpilot which makes us the highest and most-rated packaging supplier in the UK.
Customers regularly praise our helpful service, fast delivery, and product quality, which shows how a people-first approach can elevate customer experience and sets us apart in a crowded market.
We also distinguish ourselves through our specialist pallet wrap, AMED (Advanced Manufacturing Engineering & Design), in-the-box and R&D divisions. Through these, we provide focused support backed by deep technical expertise and hands-on problem-solving when it comes to resolving packaging challenges.
Our Mobile Test Facility (MTF), a fully equipped mobile trailer, gives us a further competitive edge by bringing state-of-the-art packaging technology directly to customer sites. We conduct more than 250 visits a year with the MTF, offering immediate testing, demonstrations and performance analysis where our customers are without any disruptions to their daily activities.
What are your most recent product innovations?
One of our newest innovations is a pallet stacking frame which attaches securely to pallets and provides a stable structure for adding a second – or even third – pallet above. It supports up to 800kg of cumulative weight and is ideal for protecting high-value, soft or irregularly shaped goods that can’t typically be stacked directly. If you’re limited on space, it’s great for doubling and tripling pallet capacity without increasing pallet footprint.
We have also expanded our UN-certified packaging range and are now offering 4GV boxes in new sizes not available elsewhere. These give businesses a broader range of sizes to choose from when it comes to shipping their hazardous goods.
Another recent product development of ours is a highly efficient 25mm core pallet wrap. It’s a nano-technology performance film that provides the same strength as our general-purpose film while using much less material. Customers can benefit from a 22% cost saving while receiving double the number of rolls per pallet in deliveries when they opt for this film, which reduces storage needs and carbon emissions linked to shipping.
What work are you doing in the area of sustainability?
Sustainability is at the heart of how we operate and support customers. We’re in our fifth year of carbon neutrality and have offset carbon emissions across Scope 1 and 2, as well as for business travel and downstream transportation under Scope 3.
A key part of our environmental work focuses on helping customers cut down their own carbon footprint. Through our specialised pallet wrap audits, we have already removed 508 tonnes of unnecessary packaging from supply chains by recommending advanced performance films that are both lighter and stronger.
As part of our wider mission to help businesses ‘save the planet, use less packaging’, our experts can offer advice on how to reduce, reuse, recycle and replace plastic materials. We’re continuously expanding our eco packaging range to make these materials more accessible and available for our customers.
Are you investing in staff training and skills development? Can you give examples?
Because we’re an employee share-owned business, people are naturally at the centre of everything we do. After all, we’re only as strong as the talent, skills and dedication of our employee shareholders, which is why investing in continuous learning is so important to us.
We run a degree apprenticeship, graduate management programme, and field sales and telesales academy for those seeking professional early career development. Outside of these, we have two additional apprentices enrolled at Aston University on the Supply Chain Management Professional Practice Degree Apprenticeship.
That’s not all, however. We hold frequent professional development sessions to support ongoing progression across all functions. In the past year alone, we delivered more than 200 training sessions in the areas of marketing, data, sales, customer service and more to ensure teams have the knowledge, confidence and capability to excel in their roles.
This way we ensure the strength of our workforce and also enhance the experience and expertise we share with our customers.
How future-proof and flexible are your solutions?
Knowing what the future holds is beyond anyone, but the one thing that is certain is the business world is dynamic and always changing. At Kite, we know the best way to stay ahead is to constantly innovate and invest. We believe that our latest multimillion pound investment transitioning our entire company to a single Microsoft based environment for ERP, WMS, CRM, and Ecom means that we can not only offer unbelievable slick service to customers but also have access to world class data at scale. This puts Kite in a truly unique position to adapt and make decisions quickly based on big data.
Beyond this, all solutions we offer are designed to evolve with the changing demands of modern businesses and supply chains. Packaging systems like our pallet wrappers, void fill dispensers, conveyors, and case erectors are all modular and scalable, and so they grant businesses the flexibility to expand, reconfigure or optimise workflows as their needs develop.
Looking ahead, we’re continuing to prioritise sustainability as both consumer expectations and regulatory requirements continue to rise. This way, we ensure our solutions remain compliant, responsible, and commercially viable well into the future.
What exhibitions can we expect to see your company exhibiting at in 2026?
You can find us at Packaging Innovations on 11–12th February and at IntraLogistex on 18–19th March. Both are at the NEC, Birmingham. Keep an eye on our LinkedIn for more information on stand numbers and other exhibitions we’ll be attending later in the year.
How would you sum up your company in three words?
Innovative, entrepreneurial, sustainable.
KITE PACKAGING
02476 420065
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