CorrBoard is making huge strides in cleaning up packaging, having been celebrated for turning round operations from a chaotic time through Covid. Humber business editor David Laister took a tour of the 19 acre site with managing director Rob Burgin as an incredible 18 months were analysed.
Coronavirus brought challenges and opportunities across the business spectrum. Companies having doors closed and shutters pulled down as people were forced to stay at home led to some pretty impressive pivoting.
For CorrBoard - earlier this year recognised for excellence with the top accolade at the Northern Lincolnshire Business Awards - demand for the cardboard it produces for packaging for e-commerce went ballistic.
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But it came at a cost. Barely out of the start-up phase, and still not yet through its first decade, it brought pressures never experienced, the impact of which was perhaps not realised until it was too late.
For the past 18 months, Rob Burgin has been tasked with transforming a unique operation, and with incredible capacity to call on - and a carbon footprint the envy of the industry - being ready for the sustainable growth the team are now working hard to achieve, has been key.
Mr Burgin is the eighth managing director to oversee operations at the former Hygena plant since its inception nine years ago. He’s about to become the longest serving too.
Reflecting on the Hull and Humber Chamber of Commerce’s Forrester Boyd Award for Business Excellence, received at The Baths Hall just down the road from the 320,000 sq ft plant, and all that has been achieved to get there, he said: “The win cemented the journey we have been on for the last 18 months as a business. I joined what is a relatively young business, as we’re starting to think about a 10th anniversary, in January 2022. It was born out of a need for customers who were all having to buy raw materials from larger competitors. So nine years ago eight shareholders got together to set up a sheet feeder, eight shareholders who were also customers.”
CorrBoard, with its 80-strong team, produces the corrugated material box plants then turn into the products we handle daily. From whisky boxes and high end beauty products, to industrial applications. So when lockdown hit, and businesses got to grips with what it meant, the baptism of fire began for the business.
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Mr Burgin said: “E-commerce went crazy, it was when no-one could do anything else, the packaging industry had a couple of really good years, everyone remembers an Amazon delivery arriving down the street every day. Something like 120,000 businesses went online in the first six months, and all of that needed a box. You name it, you can get anything delivered now, and nearly everything is in a box.
“Two years of Covid meant it has been incredibly busy, the business rushed itself on to running 24/7, and was literally bringing people off the streets to try and get them to work in what can be technical roles. People and the culture was broken.”
Joining the business from a general manager role at DS Smith Northfields in nearby Louth, he told how it wasn’t so much a job of papering over the cracks - something CorrBoard could do relatively easily with an annual capacity to cover Scunthorpe five times over - but bringing a new way of working.
“Some of that business is still flowing, but while we were incredibly busy, it cost us with our staff,” Mr Burgin said. “We have a team working together now, and an identity.”
A re-brand, workwear for all - be it office or production - has helped, so too a formal training and development programme, while becoming a living wage employer and introducing a five per cent wage rise across the board. All 80 are full time employees, with agency reliance now removed. Apprenticeships in lean manufacturing are also being explored.
“This is something very tangible and long term,” he said of the new approach. “A lot of people here are Scunthorpe born and bred, and have lived in the shadow of the steel works, and all the uncertainty that involves. This business is fundamentally a good business, a profitable business, but like many in this area, not enough people know of the opportunities. People now feel valued and add value and contribute to make a difference as a team.”
In 2021 the staff turnover rate was 63 per cent, it was into the 30s last year, and now single figures so far in 2023. Absence was into double figures too, now that’s 2.7 per cent.
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Like many businesses now it is feeling the pressures abounding in the economy, with an added element of over-stretching by competitors. “Volumes shot up massively over the two years, now we’re back to 2018/19 levels,” Mr Burgin said. “The difference in the five years is that lots of businesses put a lot of capacity in to meet that demand.
“The packaging market is quite inventory-high at the moment, and with the inflation, cost of living and fuel prices impacting on all our input costs at a time when volumes are going down, it is tougher.”
So what has been addressed?
“It has been a massive culture shift to focus on customers, quality of service - that communication with customers. When we got very busy it was a case of head-down and crack on, and these things disappeared and stopped being a priority for the business.
“We came off 24/7 working, and are now 24/5. We went back to eight-hour shifts, weekends off, it was a real step change in morale and staff turnover.”
Externally too, the outlook has changed for a business where revenues have fluctuated between £35 million and £50 million in recent years.
"When I came in we were very focused on a very small handful of customers, I think it was 28. We’ve got that to 79 now. A lot of box plants didn’t even know we existed. The commercial strategy needed to change. We needed a wider range of customers in a wider range of industries, as it gives us more strength in the future.”
And one strength is green credentials, for which feasibility work is being undertaken to enhance further.
A dedicated anaerobic digestion plant alongside the production facility turns food waste into energy for the plant. And with steam a key element of the manufacturing process, alongside paper - 80 per cent of which is recycled - and wheat starch - supplied from Selby - biogas as well as electricity could soon be generated.
“We are exploring production of biogas and converting the boiler to biogas from natural gas,” Mr Burgin said. “ It would be a £1 million investment. We’re looking at the feasibility, we have got the capacity to do it.
“The biggest thing now is the sustainability element. It is an area in which we are unique, the only sheet feeder in Europe that has an anaerobic digestion plant attached to it. It is still our biggest single differentiator. We are independent, and while we don’t make our own paper - we’re not an integrated site like some - we are doing more and more work on our carbon footprint, our production and delivery of our product is more and more important.
“Customers recognise this and once we are through the cost challenges it will be back where it should be on the agenda. We are seeing more brands talking about it, there is talk of a carbon tax,and ultimately it will impact packaging.
“We are in a position of strength, we believe we can get to carbon neutrality in the next couple of years. It is now about getting out and celebrating that.”
National industry awards as well as a Humber Renewables Award have helped, prior to the Northern Lincolnshire Business Awards recognition.
“We are really passionate about the fact we have raw material manufacturing that can offer a product with the lowest embedded carbon,” he added. “We are, and we will be encouraging the industry here, when they need us. We’re making sure we have as little impact as possible.”