VERTICAL form fill and seal packaging machinery manufacturer GIC and fresh produce supplier Strawson are celebrating 20 years of working together.
The Strawson business has grown out of a family farm, which is still active today, growing potatoes, carrots, parsnips and arable crops across more than 16,000 acres in Suffolk, Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. The firm ventured into contract packing for retail customers in 2002, and after four years, needed to improve its end-of-line packaging machinery, which is when Strawson first encountered GIC.
“Back then, it was Jake Rice who was overseeing engineering,” said Andy Beal, GIC MD. “We met at a trade show and got talking, after which he invited me over to the factory to look at how they were packing and to suggest improvements. We installed our first machine into Strawson, two VFB2000 machines, a couple of months later.”
Since then, Strawson has grown significantly and today supplies potatoes, parsnips and carrots to major retailers and food producers.
Harry Strawson, joint MD, added, “Strawson has changed a lot in the last 20 years, and in particular, in the last five years. We’ve seen significant growth in demand, and as a result, we have had to invest in technology, automation, and our team, while all the time staying true to our original family culture. We’ve grown on the back of being reliable, delivering a high-quality product and sticking to our values.
“As a business that works across multiple different areas – farming, transport, and factory – we have decided to partner with individual suppliers in each area. We’re putting high volume through fewer people and working collectively with them, rather than going out to tender every time. This means we’re not wasting people’s time, and we don’t have lots of different kit and spares from different suppliers.
“GIC have got a really good product, good people, and they’re local, which makes them the ideal company to partner with for our end-of-line bagging and packing.”
Today, Strawson operates 14 GIC vertical form fill and seal packaging machines: two intermittent machines on four lines and single GIC 8000 continuous motion machines on six other lines. The latest GIC 8000s were installed last August ahead of a bumper Christmas period.
The GIC8000 is a high-speed continuous-motion servo VFFS machine suited to producing a range of pack formats with bag widths up to 400mm. Strawson is currently running its GIC8000s at 75 bags per minute, but they can reach 80 packs per minute if required.
Like Strawson, GIC has also grown in the last 20 years. In fact, it was in 2006 that current directors, Andy Beal and Luke Murphy, completed an MBO, buying the company from its previous owner. Since then, the company has relocated to its current home, grown to employ 30 people, introduced several new VFFS machines, joined the Rockwell Automation OEM partner programme and more than doubled its turnover.
