Plastics & Rubber World - May/June 2019 - 26

RIGID PACKAGING

Made to order

To dismiss rigid packaging manufacturers as stack-'em-high, turn-'em-out-cheap operations
does these plastics specialists a considerable disservice, Julian Buckley reports
"

I am strongly against
bioplastics. They are a
ridiculous idea
Nigel Coates, Leeds Vacuum Formers

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e don't have a minimum order
quantity," says Nigel Coates,
managing director and owner
of Leeds Vacuum Formers (LVF). Located
in the Yorkshire city of the same name,
the company produces a mix of volume
and customised packaging solutions for a
broad range of businesses.
"The customer might want 5,000 trays
and the per-piece price will be higher than
if they ordered 100,000, but if they're happy with that we'll run the order," he says.
No matter the order size, cost is amortised over the full production run, explains
Coates. Whether the run is for 1,000 or
1m units, it still demands the same process to get from drawing board to production ﬂoor. This includes resin mock ups of
the design through to aluminium tooling,
all of which is produced by LVF.
"Whether the machine is running for
30 minutes or a full day, the same cost will
be applied over that run," he says. "While
we don't have a minimum piece requirement, the order still has to be commercially viable."
LVF started out producing in-box trays
for games and consumer electronics, but
the company moved over to food packaging when it relocated to the current
site in 2001. This includes longer production runs for commodity trays, like those
used by supermarkets for meat product,

through to custom solutions for premium
chocolate manufacturers.
"The confectionary market is a perfect
ﬁt for us," says Coates. "They are constantly reinventing the products and that really
suits us." Case in point is the packaging
for Easter eggs, which will rarely repeat
the same design. "Every year you'll see designs that might look familiar but there'll
be some subtle diﬀerences. Maybe the
product was changed, the weight went up
or down."
The set up at LVF dovetails nicely with
such changes. While Coates manages
the business, his son, Daniel, heads up
the design team. "Because my son is the
designer, we can oﬀer the customer an
additional degree of ﬂexibility," he says.
In practise, the younger Coates can sign
oﬀ on product designs in the place of his
father, cutting out time-consuming 'design
by committee' situations.
The link between father and son also
helps speed up turn-around times. "A
design change might come in on a Friday
and Daniel can prepare the samples over
the weekend for delivery on Monday,"
says Coates. "It's that level of ﬂexibility that
keeps our customers happy."
In Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, Charpak, another manufacturer of rigid packaging, had a surprisingly similar start. Having got into vacuum forming to produce

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