S2:E3 - Phil Wild, James Cropper PLC

For another episode of Season 2's 'Engaged in Conversation', we have Phil Wild, CEO of James Cropper PLC in the studio.

As a leading manufacturer of advanced paper products we discuss how a business with over 200 years of industry experience has managed to sustain and remain relevant.

Transcript

00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:21
Phil Wedgwood
Hello and welcome to Season two of Engaged in Conversation. In this episode I sit down with Phil Wild, CEO of James Cropper, a leading global manufacturer of advance paper products. We discuss how a manufacturer of over 200 years remains relevant and more importantly, sustainable in today's marketplace.

00:00:26:12 - 00:00:30:11
Narrator
Welcome to engage in Conversation, the podcast from Engage Solutions Group.

00:00:31:08 - 00:00:51:00
Phil Wedgwood
Phil, good afternoon and welcome to our studio. It's a pleasure to meet you and thank you for coming. We spoke fairly recently and seemed really excited to get you here and share your wisdom and expertize with our audience. Would you like to introduce yourself and we can start chatting about all the wonderful things that we want to discuss.

00:00:51:03 - 00:01:18:17
Phil Wild
Well, thank you for inviting me. So, yeah, for a while, I'm the group CEO of James Cropper. We are a I describe as a company with a heritage. So we're nearly 200 years old and we have three different businesses and a paper business. So which is which is the tradition traditional part of the of the business where we originally started from?

00:01:19:21 - 00:01:46:02
Phil Wild
We have a packaging business which is called color phone, and we have a technical fiber business which is manufacturing materials out of carbon fibers and polymers and so on. So we are we're about 650 strong. On the AME market and we have a turnover of just over over 100 million. But you uniquely, we're also we've got a very strong family ownership as well.

00:01:46:03 - 00:01:51:19
Phil Wild
Our our chairman is the sixth generation of the croppers who are to run the company.

00:01:52:14 - 00:02:14:10
Phil Wedgwood
Wow. That's impressive, isn't it? I think with manufacturing particularly, you do feel that we're in a bit of a renaissance period in some respects because so much of our UK manufacturing has gone over the years. So to to find out that we still have an amazing organization here that's been here for over 200 years is almost unheard of.

00:02:15:02 - 00:02:39:18
Phil Wild
Well, and we're not far from here. So yeah. Head office for us is, is in the Lake District. So what's an hour or so from from here? We have another couple of other operations in the UK as, as well and also manufacturing in the US. But I think the bit that also makes, you know, today's manufacturing different, particularly in in the UK is none of us are me too.

00:02:40:18 - 00:03:02:17
Phil Wild
We're all we're all inventors, we're all scientists, we're all chemists and we're all, you know, we're all providing sort of unique properties and unique solutions to to the customer. You know, we can't compete on cost and therefore we compete on quality and we compete on innovation and new products coming to market.

00:03:03:10 - 00:03:17:09
Phil Wedgwood
And I think that's one of the things that when we first spoke and I read up about what you do, we really came to the fore that word innovation. And I have a passion for that too. I think the history in the UK does. Tell me a bit about how you innovate.

00:03:18:12 - 00:03:51:12
Phil Wild
Well, I it's a great question and innovation for us is in the culture. So let me just sort of step back in time a little. So the the mill was established it was established in 1845 under the proper ownership, but actually it went back at least 50 to 100 years prior to that. And it's constantly reinvented itself. So going right back, say, 200 years ago, it sits on the River Kent, so it uses the water either as a as a raw material or a power source.

00:03:51:14 - 00:04:13:21
Phil Wild
Then it was a power source. So it was manufacturing cycles that were used in in crops. And then it reinvented itself and was was was grinding crops itself. So it was using they the water as a as a power source and then it reinvented itself to be able to, you know, to use the water as a raw material and was manufacturing fabrics.

00:04:14:13 - 00:04:46:02
Phil Wild
And and what you're seeing is a company with a culture that's constantly reinventing itself and looking at things that are happening. We were the first organization to manufacture different colored material. So, for example, during the war, when paper was actually too hard to come by, um, we were manufacturing things like am paper, so it was easier to, to send rings a cross for, you know, for letters and so on, so forth.

00:04:46:17 - 00:05:16:19
Phil Wild
But, but also because paper was hard to come by, we also used different metal. So we use things like sacks and fabrics to be able to make paper and they. And the irony is that that was there as as an essential today we're now taking other fabrics use fabrics from other materials like hotels or a use closed. And we're now using those fabrics to make paper again.

00:05:16:19 - 00:05:38:07
Phil Wild
But we use it's what we call post-consumer waste. We're trying to find a new lease of life, which is part of our ESG. You know, it's our environmental ethos in terms of moving, moving the company forward. Coming back to your question, I think having a culture of reinventing yourself and being agile and adaptable. For me falls in a couple of areas.

00:05:38:07 - 00:06:09:24
Phil Wild
First of all, is is the people we employ. And, you know, I'm not afraid to say we're very discerning about, you know, who joins us. We want the best people we can. And I truly believe we have we've got an amazing employees as part of the organization. And to really empower employees to try things out and and also a culture that failure is okay because if if if each time we're doing something right, we're probably not innovating.

00:06:10:03 - 00:06:16:17
Phil Wild
We're probably not testing things to the limit. We need to understand what doesn't work as well as what what does work as as well.

00:06:18:00 - 00:06:26:04
Phil Wedgwood
That sounds fantastic. And I think in this day and age, like you say, you've got to innovate, haven't you? You have. You can't stand still and just keep doing the same thing.

00:06:27:09 - 00:06:56:09
Phil Wild
And that's entirely right. And one of the things that we recognize so I've been with the company for for ten years. And one of the things we recognize shortly after I joined is we have three businesses and each of the businesses has a as an R&D function and and they're there to, you know, reinvent the product, think about what the customer wants, maybe think about problems or issues we have and and reinvent the product or perhaps reinvent the process.

00:06:57:17 - 00:07:22:14
Phil Wild
One of the things I recognized is that those activities more often were quite short lived. So if I was an employee in one of those R&D functions, you know, I'm probably working on a project that I've got to deliver next week, next month or next quarter. Very rarely am I delivering anything that that looks next year, three years or five years on.

00:07:22:14 - 00:07:46:01
Phil Wild
And so we launched a new department in the in the company, we called it technology and innovation. And that was a it's a fairly small team. And the unique thing was that they didn't have a day job. So there were no customers, no suppliers, no one ringing up on the phone saying, I've got a problem with an operation or I've got a problem with a product.

00:07:46:14 - 00:08:11:17
Phil Wild
Their job was to innovate, and so they were linking in with universities in the UK, in fact with universities worldwide, world wide research institutes. And I set them a series of objectives. And the objective was, you know, we're looking for step change technology in the organization in the medium to long term. What I mean immediate and classic, probably three to 3 to 5 years.

00:08:12:09 - 00:08:35:00
Phil Wild
And and also and looking for a new arm of our business. So I'm looking to diversify the business to beyond where it is today so that team and I think it's very if I say that the team went through a fairly cultural shock to begin with, because quite often we are we're very reactive of the jobs that we do.

00:08:35:13 - 00:09:00:24
Phil Wild
And I think putting putting yourself in that position, there's nothing to react to. You have to be very proactive. So you're driving your own agenda and that that takes a slightly different way of thinking. The net the net result of that is we did launch a new business and actually coliform was a business that that we launched and we launched we launched also a series of step change technologies for for the businesses as well.

00:09:00:24 - 00:09:20:21
Phil Wild
So, you know, and it still exists today and now it's in a different form. And we're moving it on to two different things. But but it was trying to take the spirit of the culture of innovation and really harness it in a very directive way in order to drive growth for growth for the business. But but step change growth rather than incremental growth.

00:09:20:21 - 00:09:44:01
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah. No, that's really interesting. And in terms of engaging your workforce on that innovation piece, how do you do that? You obviously set up a specific team, but is there also notion that anyone in the business can innovate? How how do you foster that sense of collating ideas or allowing people to explore ideas that can lead to innovation?

00:09:44:03 - 00:09:44:09
Phil Wedgwood
Hmm.

00:09:44:19 - 00:10:14:14
Phil Wild
Well, let me tell you a story about this. When when I when I first joined, we wanted to talk about the values of our organization. And and today we talk about sort of purpose and values. Then we were talking about mission and values. And we sat around together as as a team of board directors around the board table.

00:10:14:14 - 00:10:37:13
Phil Wild
And we brainstormed our our values and we and we cracked it within within about an hour, and we had 12 values. And we take them and they're beautifully typed up and put in a frame and put on the wall of the boardroom. And those are our values. And you kind of know where I'm going with this. I clearly it didn't work and it didn't drive the engagement and so on.

00:10:37:13 - 00:11:02:22
Phil Wild
And we we obviously realized, but it was it was a good start to sort of get ourselves thinking about that. But during COVID, we were going through a difficult time, like most manufacturers were, as you know, as demand was, it was struggling. And I chose that. That was the time to to come back and relook at what our values were as an organization.

00:11:03:14 - 00:11:25:01
Phil Wild
And so we took an entirely different approach, which arguably could have been quite challenging through COVID. But we decided to do it online. And, and so we ran a whole series of workshops with about 60 employees. So 16.4 hours is about 10% of our workforce, but it was six employees that we chose quite carefully. So we wanted that.

00:11:25:02 - 00:11:46:07
Phil Wild
We wanted a gender balance, we wanted an aged balance. We wanted a geography balance. We have employees in obviously in the UK, but also in Hong Kong and in the US and in France and in Italy as, as well. And we wanted people from different businesses. We wanted people who have just started and we wanted people who have been there for 45 years.

00:11:46:19 - 00:12:19:05
Phil Wild
So we chose a team and we ran it for at least half a dozen workshops and we were really brainstorming all the different things that we were, what was our values and what was our purpose. And there were two real key learnings for for me on that. One was when we asking the question what our values were, we actually said not what our values should be, but what are our values that have taken us 200 years to this point?

00:12:19:05 - 00:12:41:15
Phil Wild
Yeah. And for me, that was a kind of a light bulb moment. And obviously that's the right question. Yeah, because we've been inventors all the way through and and the other area and we had a discussion as directors and we said, uh, actually, you know, what we want to do in this meeting is listen as hard as we can as opposed to verbalize what we think.

00:12:41:17 - 00:13:06:21
Phil Wild
We want to listen to our employees. So we went we went through that exercise and and we came out with, with three values to our organization. We had forward thinking, caring and responsible. And that's it. And and three, we can all remember them. And it's the narrative behind the three that made it really valuable in terms of, yeah, we understand what we mean by.

00:13:06:22 - 00:13:37:20
Phil Wild
And to come back to your point about innovation, forward thinking is about innovation. Yeah. Where's the market going? Where are we in that position. Yeah. How are the global megatrends changing in terms of whether it's whether it's climate or whether it's medical care, whether it's an aging population? How do and and that became our mantra about, you know, how we think about things, you know, as it as is caring, you know, and caring you could perceive to be could be, could be loving.

00:13:37:20 - 00:13:56:16
Phil Wild
And for me, caring is doing the right thing. So if I was being caring for you and an example and maybe you just had your lunch and you've got a bit spinach on you on your tooth, you know, if if I was nice, I probably wouldn't say this to you. I'd just smile if I'm caring. I actually just let you know you've come back.

00:13:57:05 - 00:14:21:05
Phil Wild
So it's it's about doing the right thing. You know, for example, if there's an issue on safety, you know, we will address the safety issue. Someone's doing things the wrong way. The responsibility piece is what is the right thing to do within the community, what's the right thing to do for our our employees and what's the right thing to do environmentally with the with the world?

00:14:21:24 - 00:14:49:05
Phil Wild
And that's where a lot of our ESG agenda has come from in terms of looking at responsibility as well. So an entirely different process that we went to. And for me, the testament was, you know, now when we're engaging with employees, I'm now being told what our values are, not the other way around. And, you know, we've had we had a team of graduates recently who were presenting back on a on a an inclusion and diversity study that they were doing.

00:14:50:09 - 00:15:00:17
Phil Wild
And they were just they were just walking through where it sat with all our values and surmounting it. Yeah, yeah. They're really starting to engage, you know, that whole value set is now engaged within our organization.

00:15:01:12 - 00:15:21:06
Phil Wedgwood
I really like that story. It's so powerful, isn't it? Because if you've been trading for that long, you're absolutely right. You, looking back, is actually quite powerful, isn't it, to roll up what we've done so well for 200 years? Because clearly the undercurrent of that is, is the magic of your organization. Totally. So, yeah. And I really like that.

00:15:21:12 - 00:15:41:22
Phil Wedgwood
And it's interesting because innovation you hear about it a lot, but in lots of different ways, you can engage staff to to collate innovation and enable it to happen and flourish. And I like the way you the approach you've taken is to take that subset of of across population and sort of put them as an innovation group and innovation committee.

00:15:42:16 - 00:15:50:07
Phil Wedgwood
How did you operate that and for how long? And is that a continual thing or does that is it always happening, those same 60 people?

00:15:51:03 - 00:16:21:12
Phil Wild
Well, the 60 people were were a cross-section of the workforce that we used to do. They the values exercise they the the sort of the core innovation team is quite a small group, but, but you know, for me innovation is a culture and you know, I would expect as old to be innovating. So thinking, thinking creatively, trying things out, taking a risk, all the sort of things that sometimes when you go you're told not to do, you know, be safe.

00:16:21:16 - 00:16:40:20
Phil Wild
Don't take the risk. Don't failure. And we're saying actually do take the risk. Be prepared to fail. Now, clearly, that all needs to be done in a safe and controlled way. But it's a wholly acceptable way because if if you know, if we're focused on getting things right each time, you know, it is going to stifle our innovation.

00:16:40:20 - 00:16:52:01
Phil Wild
It's going to stifle our creativity, and we're not going to move things forward. And that's and that's the culture we're trying to instill across, you know, all of our employees of of how we operate.

00:16:52:01 - 00:17:13:17
Phil Wedgwood
I suppose the one thing that I'm drawn to is, is how you do that, though, because I get that you saying that out loud in saying to the team, yeah, just experiment or whatever. But you know, everyone's busy, everyone has a job to do. And so how do you do that? How do you create space for people to to innovate?

00:17:13:17 - 00:17:20:02
Phil Wedgwood
And then how do you monitor that and and link that together through the organization, make it come to life? How do you do that?

00:17:20:07 - 00:17:39:05
Phil Wild
So I think a couple of things. I mean, one is I don't want to give the sort of utopia that everything is perfect. And for sure, you know, there's lots of opportunities to to improve. But what I'm talking about is, is a culture and, you know, and and leadership is a is a is a key part of that.

00:17:39:14 - 00:18:01:03
Phil Wild
You know, being able to not necessarily to say, look, hey, I'm going to and I'm going to create you some time to innovate. But, hey, let's let's have a discussion about different ways that we can do things and let's try it out. And actually and if it fails, you know, I'm not going to have a reprimanding discussion. I can have a discussion about, well, what did we learn from that?

00:18:01:12 - 00:18:22:13
Phil Wild
Because it was done in the spirit of trying things out and developing so. So we're trying to instill that culture across the organization of, you know, empowering and engaging, of trying to do different things in different ways. Now, that might be that might be your day job or actually, you know, it might be just you're running one of the machines and you're trying things out in that in a different way.

00:18:22:13 - 00:18:38:05
Phil Wild
So like I say, but we've we have got further to go on this. So yeah, but we're far from a perfect organization. It is. But we're learning about it and and we're understanding what works and also what makes us different and harnessing what makes us difference as well in celebrating it.

00:18:38:12 - 00:18:56:19
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, no, I love it. I think I was drawn to I'm sure when I was doing my MBA, we did a whole thing on innovation. And one of the case studies was with three M and they they had a particularly strong culture around innovation. And the example is how they invented the Post-it note. And that was the the kind of backdrop to that.

00:18:57:01 - 00:19:02:04
Phil Wedgwood
But and you're from you had a I say you're from three M but you spent a large chunk of your career.

00:19:02:07 - 00:19:02:23
Phil Wild
Just ten years.

00:19:02:23 - 00:19:26:00
Phil Wedgwood
At three at Yeah. So you can correct me if I'm wrong in any of this, but I'm sure remember reading that their way of implementing that sort of innovative culture was to encourage people to take 10% of their time, and it was okay to take 10% of their time to basically do whatever they want. Yeah. Which would lead to inventing something maybe and innovating and trying out new things.

00:19:26:04 - 00:19:50:01
Phil Wedgwood
And I suppose the reason why I specifically say is you have that background with three M so is that from there but is also just giving our audience some, some techniques or some guidance around because talking about innovative cultures for specifically how you implement them is actually quite hard and challenging, especially when we're in a sort of lean environment that we're all running our business against everyone.

00:19:50:01 - 00:20:03:00
Phil Wedgwood
Super busy. You kind of say to your staff, Come on, innovate. And they say, Yeah, well, I've got way too much work already. When do you want me to innovate then? And that's the challenge, I suppose. I wonder if you had any thing to share around that.

00:20:03:10 - 00:20:29:13
Phil Wild
So I think, you know, at 3 a.m., every great organization when I'm and you know, 3 a.m. had a mantra. If you have 10% of your time, you can you can take out and you know, I think that in reality, I think it only worked in certain departments. I don't think it was across the entire organization. But I think, you know, for for us, they say it is about a way of thinking.

00:20:30:14 - 00:20:50:06
Phil Wild
And for me, this is it is a very much a leadership attribute of, you know, how how I give my team the autonomy and the sort of questions I'm asking, you know, the open questions. You know, how how do we how we've got a problem? How are we going to you know, how are we going to solve that?

00:20:50:13 - 00:21:10:14
Phil Wild
What different ideas have we got to resolve it? Right. Well, let's let's try it. So I'm fostering a culture of trying things out as opposed to maybe a more traditional leadership approach is that I'm actually quite bright and I've worked out what the solution is. And I'm not going to going to tell you to to implement it. And by the way, it kind of needs doing by 4:00 because of all on guidelines.

00:21:10:22 - 00:21:37:18
Phil Wild
Yeah. You know and actually that that's a single point of failure because if I've got it wrong the whole it's not going to work. And with the greatest of respect, what do I know about how the machine runs for 24 seven? Because I'm not the one that one that's running it. So it it is for me, a key part of that is the leadership capability of really harnessing the culture and developing that technique to to really draw out from the teams I have.

00:21:37:18 - 00:22:02:09
Phil Wild
So having a safe environment for the team to have a very open discussion about different ideas and trying them as, as well. So, you know, there's that part of it and also being open, open to other ideas. So to give you to give you another example, you know, I think we need to put our money where our mouth is when we talk about, you know, are we open to doing things differently and so on.

00:22:02:09 - 00:22:28:10
Phil Wild
And, you know, just say perhaps talking about our values and then maybe just let me play to the responsibility piece. So we've got now quite a strong ESG agenda. I would have called it CSR or a few years ago. And it's it's morphed and it's developed and it's and it's enriched. And as part of our ESG agenda, we're talking with looking at the sort of businesses that we operated on.

00:22:28:11 - 00:23:00:01
Phil Wild
And so we've done an exercise recently of what I would call ethical or unethical businesses. And so we run an exercise, say, well, actually, we want to just check that we're we're okay. We're not we're not in any any business sectors that we shouldn't be thinking. There's no way that we and we manufacture paper and we manufacture packaging materials and also we manufacture carbon fiber products as as well we should we surely can't be in any areas.

00:23:00:01 - 00:23:37:17
Phil Wild
And so we started to highlight areas that we felt as an organization were unethical. So gambling, tobacco and animal testing, I weapons, you know, and then the list goes on and and we found some and we were we were manufacturing a paper that went into the production of a of a gun cartridge. We were manufacturing a material that went into the the filter of a cigaret.

00:23:39:00 - 00:23:44:19
Phil Wild
So actually very clearly and that's now. Now, frankly, we didn't know that because a lot of our material sometimes goes to a third party.

00:23:44:19 - 00:23:45:23
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, that's it, you know.

00:23:45:23 - 00:24:01:24
Phil Wild
And then further at the supply chain. So we had to do some deep study and we exited those businesses. Wow. And so that's why I'm talking about putting putting our money where our mouth is. And we, you know, we we talk to our organization about that because clearly, from a from a growth perspective, that's the wrong thing to do.

00:24:01:24 - 00:24:06:19
Phil Wild
But for our values perspective, it was absolutely the right thing to do.

00:24:07:07 - 00:24:34:21
Phil Wedgwood
I like that. And I think one of the things that we can talk about, because you have such strong values, you can see and feel that and you know, when you engage with your business and I think from a staff retention and recruitment perspective, having those values, especially nowadays, is really important to keep. People want to be part of an organization that really has genuine values.

00:24:34:21 - 00:24:42:18
Phil Wedgwood
How important do you think that is for differentiating a manufacturing company in the UK when you're trying to grow staff here?

00:24:43:17 - 00:25:11:09
Phil Wild
Well, I think as we as we started this conversation, what's the most important thing on innovation? And it's people. Yeah, you know, and I say we're very discerning on who who joins us. And and I think you're right. Having a strong set of values is a great proposition for for employees. So let me give you another example. Um, we were approached by, uh, by the community.

00:25:11:09 - 00:25:46:03
Phil Wild
He, if I actually let me just back up from that for a minute. Our, our head office is just outside Kendal and that's where 90% of our employees are based. And we're actually in a village just outside Kendal, so quite rural and, you know, just outside the the that the the National Lake District and most of our employees will live within ten miles of at the end of our operation.

00:25:46:20 - 00:26:15:21
Phil Wild
And and so I think to some degree, uniquely, there is a much higher responsibility around the community. And because, you know, we've been employing, um, you know, the children and parents and grandparents through the ages and, and so that resonates through, through the community because they will still be in the community and you know that the local school will have parents that work at the facility as well.

00:26:15:21 - 00:26:44:04
Phil Wild
So so a very, very strong responsibility and a just to choose one example, we were approached by the community saying actually we're quite interested in putting a some solar panels on your roof and we've got we've got quite large roofs. And so we took them up on the challenge and said, Yeah, actually we will do that. And, and, and we've expanded it and expanded it and expanded it.

00:26:44:05 - 00:27:09:15
Phil Wild
So now we're generating a megawatts of solar energy. It's one of the largest roof based solar panels, solar energy schemes in the UK. Wow. Um, we now guarantee we're going to buy all that energy because we use it for our own, our own purposes at a, you know, at a good market rate. All the profits then go back into the community.

00:27:10:04 - 00:27:38:17
Phil Wild
And an example is the local school restocked and their the library based on the profits that were coming out from the from the solar scheme not going to be very easy for us to say actually are solar scheme is a really good idea and we're a big business by them. And actually we're going to save money on electricity and we're going to go green and it just wasn't the right thing to do and just sort of soundbites, not a size little thing.

00:27:38:17 - 00:27:57:24
Phil Wild
It was quite a lot of work involved, but the the sort of loyalty that drives within within a community, because the children will be talking about that because the teachers are saying, you know, this has been funded from from those solar schemes that you can just see from the windows. And and then the parents are working in they in our in our operation there as well.

00:27:58:06 - 00:28:03:04
Phil Wild
So that that drives the whole sort of ethos of loyalty to the community as well.

00:28:03:09 - 00:28:28:16
Phil Wedgwood
I love that. And in our world we talk about engagement across the three audiences that matter most. So your colleagues, your customers and communities that engage and your brand, and that's just a great example of how you can engage with your community. I really like that. And you clearly got a deep rooted sense of loyalty and relationship with the local community and and obviously wider.

00:28:28:16 - 00:28:46:02
Phil Wedgwood
I think the challenge for us is that how you can use digital to expand that and continue that engagement away from the physical and the and the local, because obviously you're global as well. So how you expand that and maybe copy that, have you copied that example on some of your other sites?

00:28:46:11 - 00:29:07:24
Phil Wild
Not not to the same degree, because we haven't got the same map because 90% of our employees are on the site. But but the same principle applies. Yeah. That within out of the sites most people live you know, fairly locally. Yeah. We're looking to do some local support work that's, that's happening into those areas too, to a much lesser degree than perhaps we've done in head office.

00:29:07:24 - 00:29:10:20
Phil Wild
But but the principle still applies to to do that.

00:29:10:24 - 00:29:34:14
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, I like it. I like it a lot. Okay. So I think the the innovation thing, which is one of the first words that we that we talked about and that came out here was really powerful and is clearly a big part of your differentiation and part of your culture. You kept you've mentioned a few times this sustainability word, I think, and that comes across as well from your branding, from your site.

00:29:35:02 - 00:29:57:00
Phil Wedgwood
And obviously when you look at packaging, which is one of the things your business is involved with, there's an immediate kind of link to, well, hold on packaging, sustainability and gosh, you only have to look in your own bin at home. It amazes me how quickly it fills up. You know, I just can't believe how much stuff, how much packaging there is in in our day to day lives.

00:29:57:13 - 00:30:32:06
Phil Wedgwood
And and I actually I wonder whether Apple is partly to play for I think the they're probably one of the brands that I see and I know it's probably affiliated with the tech space where we sit but you you you might appreciate it is that they really innovated around packaging do they they really were in that sense of when you brought your iPad home and the amazing box and the beautiful engineering of opening and all the way it was put together and every element of that was all immaculately patriotically engineered.

00:30:32:06 - 00:30:47:22
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, it really was, wasn't it? And I think that set a new bar, really didn't set in the world of packaging and what it meant and how it carried your brand and how it carried your your ethos. There is. Would you concur with that or have you got some better examples of where packaging.

00:30:48:13 - 00:31:18:18
Phil Wild
I mean that we know Apple well and and I think they have been pioneers of removing single use plastics and their whole portfolio is very well engineered and so is that so is that packaging? And but let me give you a couple of examples because I am I'm absolutely not a fan of greenwashing. And I think we need to be authentic to to who we are and what we do.

00:31:19:09 - 00:32:03:08
Phil Wild
And to give you some examples of that, let me give you some of to it. Two or three examples. So take the paper business. A paper is manufactured from AM from cellulose trees, and when you fill a tree for four purposes, the bottom part of the tree is is used for construction. In the middle part of the tree is used for furniture and all the spindly branches that you couldn't really do anything with, then use for, for paper and for every one tree that that we use, we plant three and that's part of a, you know, they the FSC standard of paper so we never buy and that not that in itself is a good

00:32:03:08 - 00:32:32:16
Phil Wild
sustainable story you know because essentially using trees, it's a big farmer's field, you know, more planted to, you know, to end and it becomes the whole thing becomes sustainable. But we didn't think that that was good enough. And and so we started to look at other materials and we were looking at what are the materials are out there that perhaps are a source of waste, that maybe we could use to to manufacture paper.

00:32:33:13 - 00:33:00:19
Phil Wild
And one of the products was, was coffee cups. And so we we started to develop a process to be able to recycle a coffee cup because a coffee cup is coated in plastic on the inside of the waterproofing. And so really at once it's used it's only got two purposes. One is landfill. Oh, the other one is burn it because you can't recycle it because it's a it's a mixed mixed material.

00:33:00:19 - 00:33:22:14
Phil Wild
And so we developed a process that extracts the the plastic from the inside of the coffee cup that then gets passed on to a third party. It gets made into, you know, carpets or insulation for the wire and different applications like that. And then we're using the fibers in there to be able to put back into into paper.

00:33:22:24 - 00:33:58:05
Phil Wild
So today we we take half a billion coffee cups from McDonald's. Starbucks, some Pret toaster, all those types of organizations. And, and we and and just using a different term, we upcycle the coffee cup back into a better product than it came from. So, so let me give you an example. Um, Burberry, a prestige brand. Um, and so if you're shopping at Burberry and you come out and you've got a Burberry bag and I'm talking about a retail bag that Yeah.

00:33:58:09 - 00:34:29:11
Phil Wild
You bought your whatever, your shoes or your Mac. And now that Burberry bag actually is 50% coffee cup a Selfridges bag. It's 50% coffee cup. A mulberry bag is 50% coffee cup. I as are many other brands as as well. Now, I mean the technical term is post-consumer waste, but actually what we've done is we've taken a product that would have gone to landfill or it would have gone to for incineration.

00:34:29:11 - 00:34:59:10
Phil Wild
And we're providing another lease of life. And moreover, that bank can then be recycled back into to other products because there's no contaminants never ending. And it continues of that. We've just launched a another product called Chaparral, and that is taking used denim. So we're taking old jeans and old jackets. They're getting reprocessed because because denim denim is cotton.

00:34:59:20 - 00:35:25:20
Phil Wild
Cotton is cellulose and it's all come it all comes from plants. And there are I mean, there are there are more clothes in the world today than that, but there are more clothes today that would that would clothe six generations of the world around you and circulation. So as your kid is an enormous success in clothing. Um, and so what we're trying to do is use some of those used clothing to be able to manufacture papers.

00:35:25:20 - 00:35:43:02
Phil Wild
So we've just launched a new product that is, it's actually 20% denim and in the products as well and actually has a slightly different feel to the product because there's some cotton in there as well. So it gives some uniqueness. So it just gives you some sort of feel about and this is what I'm saying, this is why I'm very anti greenwashing.

00:35:43:02 - 00:36:03:08
Phil Wild
You know, the recycling operation that we have two cups is is is in with our facility. You know, you come in and you will see you'll see coffee cups after coffee cups stacked in and in bales, you'll see our recycling operation. You'll see where we're actually manufacturing the product that we were producing from from denim as as well.

00:36:03:24 - 00:36:33:13
Phil Wild
I'm on Tuesdays just to use one other example. The original reason why we started colorful and this comes back to your Apple discussion was we were looking for an alternative to single use plastics that they're using packaging. So for example if you were to buy a good example would have been a mobile phone. But if you were to buy it's a perfume or a fragrance and it comes in a beautiful box and you open the box and you take out the fragrance.

00:36:33:24 - 00:36:55:18
Phil Wild
And inside that boxes is a vacuum form plastic because that's where the bottle sits and it kind of kind of stops it rattling round. Now, the issue with that box is it's mixed waste and it's very, very difficult to recycle mix. Right. So so really what you should be doing after you've got your box, you'd go in and you pull out that vacuum for one piece of plastic.

00:36:55:18 - 00:37:15:22
Phil Wild
You put that in the plastic waste and you put the other bit in the paper waste and it's just not going to happen is certainly not going to happen in the in the majority of cases. So we developed a molding process for paper. So we call it 3D molding. You have a male and a female molding you and you are compressing pulp together to create different shapes.

00:37:15:22 - 00:37:44:01
Phil Wild
Now the inside of a an apple packaging is that process because it's actually it's very well-engineered. It's a fantastic finish. We can make it in any color one. So now we're producing a product that takes out all the vacuum foam plastic from packaging. You put that you replace the product in there and to show you've got a case for you've got a, you know, you can put your perfume in.

00:37:44:01 - 00:38:03:09
Phil Wild
It's not going to rattle around six and a pop you put the top on. The difference now is it's all paper. So you take your perfume out, you use it, and you just recycle it. And you don't have to worry about taking the thing apart and so on. So, so again, it just two real examples of, you know, things that we're doing and sustainability and innovation.

00:38:03:09 - 00:38:04:13
Phil Wild
For me it's the same topic.

00:38:05:00 - 00:38:28:23
Phil Wedgwood
It is hugely interlinked, especially in your world. You're right. I mean, it makes you think with this level of innovation, what point do you think we will stop worrying about the waste from packaging in the sense we are now? Because even your story about the coffee cups, it was only recently there was a big campaign about having a single use coffee cup instead of going in using all the paper ones.

00:38:28:23 - 00:38:43:20
Phil Wedgwood
But you're saying, well, that's fine because we recycle them all anyway, so do I need to worry about that anymore? You know, it's that cyclic effect of we create the problem and then you solve it, and then everyone's like, Oh, okay, cool. So I can carry on having my Starbucks then and not worrying about it.

00:38:44:04 - 00:39:10:02
Phil Wild
I having a healthy anxiety is a good thing. I mean, for sure, you know, we'll take more coffee cups but you know, you know, let's let's assume that there are 20 billion coffee cups used maybe every every week or every two weeks around the world. Yep. That is a problem. And so, you know, the, you know, going in and using a single of course, that's a good idea.

00:39:10:12 - 00:39:34:14
Phil Wild
And in actual, actual fact, what what is the most environmentally friendly packaging you can have? Well, it's no packaging. You know, it is reusing. Now, the difference is the products are bought on the esthetics and packaging is part of the esthetic. So so it is part of the appeal of right. So so I don't see it packaging ever truly disappear.

00:39:34:14 - 00:39:49:06
Phil Wild
But where you can minimize packaging the better. So let me give you one other example. We've done some work recently with with Moet Hennessy and one of their champagnes is, is a product called Roon Art and.

00:39:49:22 - 00:39:51:00
Phil Wedgwood
It's one of my favorite. I love.

00:39:51:00 - 00:40:24:00
Phil Wild
It. Oh, you got me Blondie Blanc and I. And that comes it comes in a beautiful box. So just a little bit higher than the champagne bottle itself. And you can open the doors and you can close the doors and then kind of close that with a clunk. And they do that because they've got magnets in the doors and the bottle set sits nicely there because it's got a nice vacuum form plastic base to it and it clips into a nice vacuum from top on it goes as well.

00:40:24:13 - 00:40:53:07
Phil Wild
So, so we worked with, with Moet Hennessy and the Runner team to totally redesign that product. And what we came up with is, is what we call a second skin. So the now the box doesn't exist and it's like a clamshell that sits around the bottle itself that's made out of molded fiber. So from our, from our color form range and it looks amazing.

00:40:53:21 - 00:41:18:22
Phil Wild
And because we, we're very good at engineering finishes on paper, we touch it. We took a digital image of the inside of the sellers of where the run out is stored. And and we put that as an embossed pattern on the outside of the, of the packaging. And it looks, it looks out of this world. So so it has got the brand appeal now, the differences.

00:41:19:17 - 00:41:57:06
Phil Wild
It's nine times lighter than the box and it's what we call mono material. So it's totally recyclable. So we've taken weight out and we've got a product that's completely recyclable, reusable, compostable, unlike the box, which you can't cause. It's got magnets in it, it's got its own plastics in it and, and so on. So and that's that was a point on the, you know, it's likely that packaging will always feature as part of selecting a product because when you look at a bottle of fruit, despite this your favorite or not, but if you look at it quite often, champagne is a gifting product.

00:41:57:06 - 00:42:14:09
Phil Wild
Yes. Or it's a celebration product. Yeah. So the esthetics and esthetics are important. And our goal here is to make the esthetics look as beautiful as possible, but as an environmentally friendly as possible as well. And that for me, that was such a great example of where we did that with with Runar.

00:42:14:14 - 00:42:38:13
Phil Wedgwood
It's brilliant story. I love it. I love all these stories of innovation and how they linked to sustainability and all of that good stuff, I suppose in my head. I mean, you're sat here in our green screen studio. We, we call it our augmented reality studio. We, we, we like to think we're quite innovative, a business. We've pioneered the use of augmented reality and engagement platforms at the moment.

00:42:38:13 - 00:42:57:03
Phil Wedgwood
So I look at that opportunity and think, ideally, how long will it be before there's no packaging? And I know that's not going to work with everything. But you know, in my head I live in a world where I point my phone, an object, and I can do whatever packaging you want. I can make that object come to life.

00:42:57:03 - 00:43:12:05
Phil Wedgwood
I can animate to engage with you in a whole host of different ways via technology. Is that something that I don't really see people doing that at the moment that much? Is that something that you think could be a growth area? The packaging industry?

00:43:12:21 - 00:43:37:19
Phil Wild
I think I think there's there's a lot of different platforms. I mean, for me, for a for a product, there's nothing quite like the physical touch and the appeal of the product. But but also, you know, you start to think about, well, how, how can technology play play a part in that as as well. So then you start to think about things like smart packaging.

00:43:37:19 - 00:44:12:12
Phil Wild
And what I mean by smart packaging is I, you know, I'm buying a product and maybe, maybe it's a food source and and I can maybe use phone to just just to check in. And, you know, within the packaging, there is there's some device in there that helps that is tracking that product as as well. So an example would be, you know, I can click on it on a chicken and I can I know how long that chicken has actually been in the shelf.

00:44:13:02 - 00:44:28:17
Phil Wild
I know the sort of temperature it's been stored at. And it will tell me actually, it's green. That's okay. It's been there for two days. It's been stored below four degrees or actually it comes out red. It's actually been there for three weeks and it's got up to it's got up to 20 degrees because the freezer went off, you know.

00:44:28:17 - 00:44:51:12
Phil Wild
So I think there are different applications on technology. And also authentication is becoming a much bigger, bigger topic as as well with with fraudulent products. So whether that's in pharmaceuticals or, you know, or other tax related products as well. And that and and technology plays a key part in that. And would describe it as authentication of a of a product.

00:44:51:22 - 00:45:07:08
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah. Yeah. And you see Amazon innovate. I mean, gosh, I think certainly decathlon that have the RFID on every single product. And that's something that they talked about, the notion that when you go shopping, you put it all in the trolley, you just walk right out and you don't have to do anything. I still.

00:45:07:13 - 00:45:11:15
Phil Wild
Just freak you out when you first do that because I did that and I was the price was yeah.

00:45:11:19 - 00:45:18:22
Phil Wedgwood
But I love it. And I think well, it's, it's the technology is there why isn't it being more widely used, you know as you so much easier wouldn't it.

00:45:18:22 - 00:45:45:05
Phil Wild
But precisely and I think it's there's got to be a need to use it. Yeah. And there's also got to be a customer acceptance that, you know, it works. There's an infrastructure that needs to be put in place. So the element of tax are already exist. So you'd said on a perhaps a cigaret packet packet know not not that we would work in that area, but you know, it would be to check actually that the tax had been paid on the import tax and that, you know, there were legal and so on.

00:45:46:01 - 00:46:06:15
Phil Wild
But I think what we see moving forward is a lot more technology involved. So maybe to give you another example, I I'm buying a a piece of equipment, so I'm buying maybe it's a new TV. I'm buying. And when when I'm buying a new TV and I don't know why you find the same, but you've got the physical product in there.

00:46:06:15 - 00:46:13:03
Phil Wild
I knew about the packaging around it, but then you've got pages and pages in in English and in Dutch and German. And you never.

00:46:13:03 - 00:46:13:15
Phil Wedgwood
Read any of.

00:46:13:21 - 00:46:42:16
Phil Wild
Them? Precisely. And so actually what is stopping me from having my phone and scanning it and I can actually read it all online. That's it. And, and that's that's a technology that's starting to to emerge now. So maybe it's a, you know, a QR code that's on it's on the TV and I can I can just click it and I can actually work my way through and doing it equally with some visual products or even, you know, things like smart cams and so on.

00:46:42:20 - 00:46:55:16
Phil Wild
It'll talk to you now and say, you know, welcome, press this button and so on. So you can see that sort of technology taking that that much, much bigger role in, you know, in terms of product selection and application.

00:46:55:16 - 00:47:19:24
Phil Wedgwood
I think you're right. And I think that's the thing that gets my mind racing because I think it's ultimately the Segway of the physical and the digital combining. And you're absolutely nailing that whole physical innovation and it's fantastic to see, isn't it? So it'd be really interesting to see what happens in 3 to 5 years. I think with augmented reality it will take that long for it to be mainstream.

00:47:20:07 - 00:47:25:14
Phil Wedgwood
And I do wonder if we're going to look at retail and packaging in a whole different way.

00:47:25:24 - 00:47:45:09
Phil Wild
I'm sure we are. I'm sure we are. And I think, you know, the use of data is now, you know, far more readily accessible. And, you know, we see that the way that, you know, retailers are now positioning products because that, you know, they will understand what sells, what sells where. And I think that will form part of the packaging as well.

00:47:45:09 - 00:48:16:11
Phil Wild
But, you know, we're very much focused on on the physical product and, you know, in a sustainable and an environmental way, in a responsible way, you know, making some of those products look look as beautiful as possible, but an alternative to perhaps what, you know, removing some products that that weren't so single use plastics and yeah what I call you know non mono materials so materials are different different sorts of products in there that are very hard to recycle.

00:48:17:04 - 00:48:25:14
Phil Wedgwood
Brilliant. So would you just like to share with us then your top three priorities around how you engage your workforce?

00:48:27:03 - 00:48:53:17
Phil Wild
So yeah, I think probably my first one, it was about communication, you know, explaining in to our team of the reality of what's happening and doing that in a transparent way, which actually would be my, my second area, you know, to be very authentic. You know, we talked previously about greenwashing, which, you know, I'm very anti is doing things that right.

00:48:53:17 - 00:49:22:11
Phil Wild
And when you're communicating, explaining things as they are, you know, the good areas and the bad and and also as we do as we're going through is really listening to act in place. So that would be my third area I have, you know, but I mean, active listening, really understanding, not just just seeing voice but the trend of things that are happening across your organization and acting on it as well.

00:49:22:23 - 00:49:26:18
Phil Wild
So communication, transparency and listening.

00:49:27:09 - 00:49:45:17
Phil Wedgwood
Fantastic. Are really like those great. Phil, it's been fascinating talking with you today and you could literally sit here and talk about technology and innovation all day long. Is so brilliant to hear about a manufacturing company that's doing so well, so fantastic. Really appreciate your time.

00:49:46:02 - 00:49:49:23
Phil Wild
Good. I've enjoyed every minute of it. Thank you for the opportunity.

00:49:49:23 - 00:50:00:08
Narrator
Thanks for listening. To Engage in conversation. It was presented by a CEO, so watch it for more news and updates on Engage, visit our website Engage Solutions Become.