中文There’s a quiet kind of confidence you only get from a family business that’s been around for four decades. Lesters Packaging, a corrugated box maker founded in 1983, just put its money where its mouth is: more than £2 million into a new headquarters in Cannock, in the UK’s West Midlands.
And here’s the detail that should make every print boss sit up. This isn’t a firm limping along. Managing director Billy Hutchinson told Printweek the company has just had its “best-ever year.” Current turnover sits at £19.5 million, and the stated ambition is to hit £30 million in annual revenue by 2030. That’s not a tweak. That’s a step change.
So what does £2m actually buy you? Lesters has taken on an additional 9,383 square metres of space — manufacturing, warehousing and offices all under one roof. The plan is smart: their existing factory in nearby Burntwood becomes a high-volume production centre, while the new site handles administration, storage and the lower-volume, specialist work. It’s the kind of split that lets a business protect its core output while building capacity for the trickier, higher-margin jobs.
Staff are expected to move in by the new year. High-volume flatbed die-cutting, specialist manufacturing and distribution should be running by November. The company is creating 10 jobs initially, on top of its current team of 64 — modest on the surface, but meaningful for a firm of this size.
What I love about this story is the candour. Hutchinson didn’t dress it up. “We’d outgrown our current footprint,” he said, and when a site on Hawkins Drive came up, the decision was easy. Any owner who’s ever tripped over their own inventory or turned away a job because the floor was full will recognise that feeling. Growth is supposed to be the good problem. But without the space and the systems to absorb it, growth becomes chaos.
The investment isn’t just four walls. Lesters is buying a new strapping line, a waste extraction system, a two-piece stitcher and a state-of-the-art conveyor system designed to cut down on manual movement. For a packaging plant, that’s the unglamorous backbone of efficiency — the stuff that decides whether you make money on a tight-margin box job or quietly bleed on it.
Then there’s the machine that really signals intent: a second TCY Jumbo Casemaker. The first one went in back in 2021 and strengthened their large-format and heavy-duty case work; a TCY N6 followed in 2023. Hutchinson calls the second Jumbo “transformational.” Talks with the manufacturer are going well, and he expects it operational within 18 months.
Why does a casemaker matter so much? Because heavy-duty corrugated — the kind that protects appliances, industrial parts and bulk goods — is where specialist packaging firms carve out defensible territory. Anyone can knock out a standard shipping box. Fewer can deliver engineered, large-format case work reliably and at volume. That’s the moat.
Lesters expects the new HQ to lift sales by a further 25% within three years, and by 50% over the decade. Those are bold numbers, but they’re grounded in something tangible: a family firm that knows exactly what it does well, and is reinvesting profits into doing it better.
For the wider print and packaging community, there’s a lesson here that’s easy to miss. We spend a lot of time worrying about the doom-loop of declining print volumes. But corrugated packaging is a different animal. E-commerce keeps eating the world, and every parcel needs a box. Sustainability pressures are pushing brands toward paper-based packaging over plastic. The firms that invest in capacity, automation and specialist capability — rather than freezing and hoping — are the ones that will still be standing in 2030.
Lesters is proof that the old-school, family-run model isn’t dead. Done right, it’s a competitive advantage: patient capital, local roots, and a willingness to back yourself when the order book is strong. £2m is a vote of confidence not just in one Midlands factory, but in the future of making things in Britain.
Source: Printweek
