Outsourcing versatility

Earlier this year the Princess Royal officially opened the new £12M factory at Lea Green, St Helen's of Remploy Household & Toiletries, the household goods and toiletries manufacturing, packing and filling division of the UK's largest employer of disabled people. In doing so, business manager Frank McAdam said she had "ushered in an exciting new era of opportunity" for the fast-growing business.

The 107,000 sq ft facility, built in just two years, has double the capacity of the business's four previous plants at St Helens, Radcliffe near Manchester, Aintree and Woolwich and is already operating seven days a week. By mid-summer 250 personnel will work at a factory whose every aspect was designed to comply with the latest international hygiene and quality standards. Remploy claims the facility is also currently unique in being Europe's only manufacturing plant to offer formulation, mixing, filling and packing of both household and personal care goods on one dedicated site.

The Household and Toiletries division, whose customers range from large multinationals to cash and carry operators, was formerly part of Remploy's dedicated packaging operations but, in 2000 following a regular strategy review for the Department of Work and Pensions (which still provides some funding), broke away to become independent. The factory's construction was a central tenet of the plans.

"The five-yearly review identified that the new division should operate more commercially than its previous constituent businesses," explains McAdam. "I am proud that, in the last 3-4 years, via first class service, excellent customer relationships, growth in sales of our own-label personal care range, and continuing innovation in everything from packaging fulfilment to formulation, we have done this, doubling our turnover year-on-year.

"Traditionally," McAdam continues, "personal care factories have operated to significantly higher hygiene and environmental standards than household goods plants but, by running the entire facility to world-class standards, we can accommodate the entire gamut of household and personal care items." McAdam says a key goal is to increase the volume of filling and packaging of cosmetics and even cosmeceutical products.

The division's turnover is currently generated 65% from third party filling and contract packing, 15% from manufacturing, filling and packing Remploy's recently extensively revamped "own brand" Only Natural personal care products, and 15-20% from private label manufacturing and packing.

McAdam expands: "Our contract manufacturing and packing service encompasses everything from receiving a finished product like shampoo in bulk and simply packing it into bottles, to creating new product formulations from scratch, mixing the product, filling it, packaging it and managing its onward journey.

"We also increasingly now provide customer advice on anything from switching to a more cost-effective raw material supplier to how to prevent "bubbling" on clear-on-clear labels."

Packaging matters are the domain of packaging technologist Steve Hayes, who joined about two years ago. A chemistry graduate, Hayes spent many years working in the field with companies including one of the area's best-known employers, Lever Brothers, and subsequently cider producer Bulmer's, before concluding packaging offered "a more interesting career".

"The key elements of my job include overseeing packaging trials, project management, costing evaluation, developing close customer/supplier relationships, creating a specification system for packaging components, quality assurance, minimising material consumption and reducing customer costs, and ensuring new packaging machinery functions correctly," he explains.

"I have also established a matrix system to ensure optimal compatibility between the various bottle materials and labels/label adhesives we use, and take a keen interest in training of packaging and filling line personnel. Remploy has always prided itself on its training,"

"One of my most interesting and, frankly, often most difficult, tasks is line trial supervision. Just because a product was easy to fill and pack elsewhere doesn't mean it'll be simple for us. I also enjoy helping customers find cost-effective solutions to problems even if this means me still being in the factory at 11pm."

Hayes deals daily with departments ranging from planning, buying, sales and marketing and customer service to, increasingly, the site's r&d unit – which undertakes everything from product mixing to customer specifications and microbiological testing to advising brand owners on ways to reduce aggressive chemical content in skin and haircare products. The expertise can be harnessed and reused both in third party contracts and when formulating or improving Remploy's own brand products.

Although the Household and Toiletries Division's focus is on "breaking-even, not making vast profits", Hayes' boss McAdam says it runs on "extremely efficient, commercial lines". "However, our key raison d'être is as an employer of disabled people," he explains. Currently about 80% of the site's employees are disabled, but McAdam hopes to increase this to 90%, in line with the Remploy "national average". Disabilities range from dsylexia to missing limbs and partial paralysis.

While much of the filling and packaging equipment at Lea Green was moved from the earlier sites, and is reconditioned, new machinery, including a Pago labeller, has also been installed.

Hayes adds: "By running as many as eight different packaging and filling lines we can offer a flexible, versatile service to our customers, many of whose own lines are extremely expensive to run and maintain. We can achieve fast changeovers and have the time, opportunity and expertise to tailor the way we produce, fill and pack different products."

Immediately evident is the combination of manual and automatic filling and packing, which Hayes acknowledges "works extremely well for us", but "would not suit an ultra-high volume production plant of the type typically run by the Cussons and Levers of this world".

On a filling/packing line for children's bubble bath, for example, PET bottles are placed manually on the conveyor automatically filled on a six or eight-head in-line filler, and have the caps applied and hand-tightened by shopfloor personnel. A King cap closure system then mechanically tightens the closures, after which bottles are automatically fitted with wraparound labels, inkjet batch coded and conveyed to an automatic shrinkwrapper.

McAdam says: "While a large contract packer or in-house packaging operation might typically have a filling/packing throughput of 200-300 bottles/min, with the fully automated line run by 4-5 staff, we might more usually achieve nearer to 50 bottles/min using 10-11 staff through a combination of manual and automatic operations. However, you won't find many factories offering our flexibility, versatility, or pride in the job."

Collaborative culture

Collaboration is a recurring theme. One recent project, which saw the packaging, sales and marketing and r&d departments work closely involved a comprehensive rebranding of Remploy's Only Natural personal care range, whose USP is a sub-99p selling price.

Brand manager Lyndsay Jones explains: "Launched in 1998, the Only Natural range had, by 2004, grown to about 80 different products, ranging from soaps, bubble baths and shampoos to nail varnish remover and hair gel. It has performed well in its primary, discount sector target market, but we wanted to broaden its appeal, make the product choice less confusing, provide unifying categories and themes and develop a brand with its own equity."

After extensive consumer research, Remploy re-organised and consolidated the range, cutting it to around 40 products and creating four main Only "sub-brands": Only Essentials – everyday, functional, personal care products like foam bath and soap that aim to "offer the same properties as big brands; Only Natural – skin and haircare products incorporating "natural extracts", herbs, fruits and aromatherapy ingredients, Only Me – "pampering" toiletries for women, and the Only Kids range.

While hopeful the range's re-branding and distinctive new packaging will boost sales, Jones reveals, excitedly, that a new, "slightly more upmarket" range of Remploy own brand toiletries will be "launched "imminently", to be targeted "more at the leading multiples".

Quite a challenge, but with the plant bringing together such diverse skills, McAdam is confident few manufacturing, filling and packing challenges will worry his workforce.

The plant will soon further augment its capabilities by becoming the UK's first contract packer to operate a rotary filling line for hot wax and cream-based products like hair waxes, while it is also one of few such facilities able to fill and pack enzymatic detergents. It will also soon start up a dedicated filling line for flammable products like nail varnish remover.

Service history

Remploy's Household & Toiletries Division is part of an organisation established in 1945 by the Government to provide work for servicemen injured or disabled in the two World Wars. In the 60s, Remploy broadened its remit to its current-day role of helping disabled individuals from all walks of life find rewarding jobs.

Today 6,000 disabled staff work directly for Remploy's manufacturing and service businesses, producing and supplying goods ranging from lifejackets for Round-the-World yachtsmen and footstools for Royal Mail sorting offices to toiletries. The workforce is deployed at over 80 UK sites, and, alongside manufacture, undertakes associated outsourced services, from car industry parts procurement to contract packaging.

A further 6,000 work within large, private manufacturing and services businesses – from Lever Brothers to the Ford Motor Company – while Remploy's managed services division supplies teams to undertake private and public sector support activities like office cleaning and CCTV monitoring.