National Flexible is the UK’s largest distributor of polypropylene, laminates, special films, and pouches. The business was founded in 1993 but has been operating in some form for over 50 years, first as a general packaging merchant, then as a specialist flexible packaging supplier. Whatever the product, as Managing Director George Slack explained to Hannah Barnett, innovation at the company has always been paramount.
National Flexible was founded in Bradford by Executive Chairman Barry Twigg with the express intention to be different.
“Barry had spent 30 years in the corporate world,” said George Slack, Managing Director, “and he wanted to own a company where the people had a chance to make a difference, with possible equity in the business as well. So, our values are very important, which are ‘caring, sharing, being different.’ We try to take them into everything we do with our customers, our people and our suppliers.”
In an annual customer survey that has run over the last six years, 100% of National Flexible customers said they would recommend the company. This is testament to the business model and the values instilled in the workforce.
“We try to employ people that embody those values as well,” said Mr Slack. “It’s not about sales and profit, it’s about building a better business. And if we do
that, then the sales and profit should look after themselves.”
Indeed, over 50% of employees have been with National Flexible for over ten years, this figure accounts for the growth of staff numbers over that time period.
Pioneering products
National Flexible largely produces film on the reel, pouches and quad seal bags for the bakery, snack foods, confectionery and pet food sectors.
The company is known for producing industry-firsts. For example, recyclable and high barrier flat bottom pouches, now the fastest growing format in flexible packaging.
In addition, National Flexible have developed an innovative recyclable film for Paxo. The film also uses 60% recycled content by combining Post Consumer Recycled (PCR) waste with post-industrial regrind (PIR), another industry-first. The company won an award for this creation at the UK Packaging Awards in 2022.
A network of global suppliers has proved indispensable when it comes to developing these innovative products. “We don’t make the material ourselves and that’s a big benefit for us and our customers,” Mr Slack explained. “Though we’ve got core suppliers that we use all the time, we’re always on the lookout for something different. The recyclable flat bottom pouch was one of those cases.
“We’ve got complete alignment with our suppliers because we’re a specialist distributor. So, if we don’t have a good
partnership, then we can’t supply our customers. It’s as simple as that. Therefore, we view our suppliers as partners. We’ve tried over the years to have a portfolio of suppliers that are specialists in different areas, with differing strengths in materials and markets to others.”
The sustainable solution
Though much of what National Flexible sells is plastic, or plastic-based, the company is keen to point out that this should not take away from its sustainable credentials.
“We’re neither pro-plastic nor anti-plastic,” said Mr Slack. “We feel it’s more important to look at what the best material is for that particular product, in accordance with a lifecycle analysis. Quite often we find that plastic is more favourable than its alternatives, because it’s lightweight and has a low carbon footprint in manufacturing.”
National Flexible offers Sustainability
Packaging Audits, providing a full analysis of a company’s current film and packaging operations while suggesting alternative film and/or print, based on the latest technology where necessary.
The goal is to find cost, efficiency and environmental savings, “or ideally all three” as Mr Slack put it. The company states that customers have saved over 1,000 tonnes of material in the last few years and £2.5 million in just one year.
Indeed, a Sustainability Packaging Audit is how the award-winning Paxo partnership came about. “The customers often get the same or better performance in terms of line speeds, shelf-life, cost and things like that, but they’re using something that’s a lot more sustainable, costs less, or it may just be thinner,” Mr Slack added.
In 2022, National Flexible installed solar panels on its roof, meaning it now produces
82% of its own electricity, with any extra exported to the National Grid. This has allowed the company to achieve Carbon Neutral certification, alongside ISO14001, which calculates emissions within scopes 1, 2 and 3.
“Some of our suppliers are overseas, so we’ve got to do some offsetting, but all of what we do here is as a carbon neutral business,” said Mr Slack. “We’ve also put in a voltage optimisation unit, which reduces the amount of power used when we do need to take it from the grid. That’s saved many tonnes of CO 2 and reduced our energy consumption by nine per cent. We’ve got a very large warehouse here,
it’s 40,000 square feet. So, we’ve put in LED lighting for example, which again, means less power used.”
Presenting the facts
National Flexible established its ‘Academy’ initiative in 2017, as a response to David Attenborough’s Blue Planet TV series, which in part documented the damage to the ocean via plastic pollution.
“That gave quite a jolt to the plastic packaging industry and suddenly a lot of our customers were asking to know more,” Mr Slack explained. “So, we put a presentation together based on very well-sourced factual evidence across all sorts of different things to do with the environment, including packaging plastics and non-plastics.
“We wanted to give our customers the facts so they would be better informed in
The food waste problem
“The UN have calculated that 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted globally each year, which amounts to just less than the carbon footprint of China or America. Packaging is the wrong problem to be looking at; it’s tiny compared to the carbon footprint of all that food waste. And, in many ways packaging helps reduce that footprint because it extends the shelf life of products,” George Slack, MD, National Flexible.
terms of knowing the best thing to use for their products, what to tell their own customers and how to deal with the retailers.”
The Academy presentation has been continuously updated ever since (it was presented virtually during the pandemic). Representatives from National Flexible have now presented to over 1,200 customers, suppliers, or other prospects from 150 different companies, and even to the local WI (Women’s Institute).
Fact remains the most important element in a presentation: “It’s not about trying to sell National Flexible, it’s just about getting the correct information out there,” Mr Slack said.
The company also offers more specific technical training for customers and prospects to learn more about the materials used. “That’s all about how the materials are made, what the different properties are
and why one substrate is used instead of another,” Mr Slack explained. “It’s an interactive, engaging presentation and we do quite a lot of group exercises within it.”
Being at the forefront of an industry that never stands still is clearly a key motivator for Mr Slack.
“The last 10 years have been really interesting, because a lot of the materials we supply now weren’t even available 10 years ago,” he concluded. “Blue Planet had a lot to do with that and the industry has a lot. So, in another 10 years, it’s probably going to be different again. For us, offering the sorts of things that we can offer at National Flexible, who wouldn’t be excited?” n
