Just a little after its 1st birthday, sales through the Bigbox factory in Wellington/Somerset have reached the £1 million milestone. Whilst the facility has been up and running since May 2022 in some capacity, it wasn’t until the final machine (the Gazella Atlantique Stitcher) was installed and operator training on the Weipong Printer Slotter was completed, that the operation was considered as being in full production.

Sales Director, Steve Gabell said, “The first year has been quite a complex undertaking, with market fluctuations in materials and a reduction in volumes across the corrugated industry taking hold. This has meant the pressure has really been on to drive both sales and productivity through the plant. Added to this, the difficult labour marketplace, availability of common products associated with manufacturing and streamlining IT hardware and software systems – a lot of work has gone into setting up this momentum and we are proud to have reached our first milestone. I’m also proud that we were able to get the plant FSC® certified within the first few months giving the plant its first sustainability credentials. Also positive was most of the work we have put through the factory has been in key sectors, such as packaging for furniture where we have not been able to push as hard for orders as we would have liked prior to the factory opening”. He continued “The most surprising aspect of the journey so far is the amount of printed, large rotary die-cuts we have put through – this is likely to be a key growth area for us over the coming years”.

Rotary die-cutting is a precise high-speed process used to cut and shape cardboard and custom print in the same process. If you would like to know more about this capability, please talk to us (hello@rhfibreboard.co.uk ).