Smith & McLaurin is a respected manufacturer of materials for pressure sensitive self-adhesive labels (PSLs), tickets and tags. The company supplies materials to a wide variety of industries including leading retailers, global beverage brands and food manufacturers. Hannah Barnett spoke to Sales Director John Radford and Managing Director Pat Kennedy to learn more.
Longevity is not something Smith & McLaurin needs to worry about. The privately-owned business has been trading since 1849 and has been on its site in Kilbarchan on the west coast of Scotland since 1868.
These days, the workforce is 78-people strong with a turnover of £24 million. Personnel are not lacking in experience; the in-house technical team boasts 100 years of knowledge between the five of them.
Offering a diverse range of products, with no customer representing more than 8% of turnover, the company maintains a strong position in the market. And it continues to do so, despite the rise of global giants in the labelling sector, by prizing innovation and specific product development. Smith & McLaurin knows its niche and flourishes within it.
“We are a pan-European business,” said John Radford, Sales Director, “whereas our competitors are true global giants. Each of our competitors have key strengths for servicing the market with commoditised products. Our strength, over the last 20 years, has been to focus on the modified commodity sector, which is 20 per cent of the market. And that feeds into our core pillars: service, trust and innovation.”
Always innovative
Emerging from a period featuring Brexit, Covid and worldwide supply chain delays challenged every industry, smith & McLaurin’s secret to profitable growth is continuing to innovate.
“We have seen a significant consolidation of our customer base,” explained Mr Radford. “Across the UK, Ireland and central Europe, our traditional client base has been acquired not only by similar businesses, but also flexible packaging and corrugated cardboard companies. In Benelux, for example, there used to be 13 or 14 customers: that is down to three key groups, with a greatly reduced number of independent label convertors trading in this region.
“Europe is an eight billion square-metre label market, and we’ve got two-and-a-half
per cent of it. So, we must remain relevant within these consolidated groups because we’re fighting global billion-dollar organisations. Our innovation is the key differentiator across all our regions.”
Over the years, the company has launched many pioneering products from the label in the centre of vinyl records to signage used inside the Apollo space craft. Recently, the company developed products for the digital market including for HP, using its own proprietary top coatings and latterly for inkjet technologies. Nowadays, Smith & McLaurin is innovating with its approach to sustainability.
Adaption to the market
Smith & McLaurin classifies its products using ‘Adapt’ as the prefix for the different ranges. “We use a chameleon on the logo because the chameleon adapts to its envi ronment and we adapt to our customers’ environment,” explained Mr Radford.
The Adapt range splits all 450 of the company’s products into six key areas: digital, wine and spirits, speciality, modified commodity, security, and sustainability –
the last one being the AdaptEco range.
“Sustainability is probably the key driver, not only for us, but the whole industry and every market sector,” said Mr Radford. “We have spent the last two to three years developing products for AdaptEco that help our customers to differentiate with their customers from commoditised products.”
The company helps customers operate sustainably, partly because of upcoming plastic taxes set to be introduced in the UK within the next 18 months. These taxes will have a significant effect on the bottom line of retailers and brand owners if current labelling and packaging is not changed.
The introduction of plastic taxes will bring a whole new approach to the sector, Mr Radford said: “For us as a business, it’s not about a reduction in carbon footprint; it’s about giving our customers products that allow them to offer the brand owners and retailers the ability to reduce the amount of taxes they’re going to be paying. We are taking industry standard grades, removing the plastic, and replacing them with nonplastic alternatives. That’s been one of our key drivers. And it’s been very successful in these early stages and will continue to drive our growth in the coming years.”
PurityWash
One of Smith & McLaurin’s most innovative products is PurityWash. The first-to-market adhesive lets labels easily wash off from plastic and glass bottles or containers
during industrial cleaning. The adhesive leaves materials residue-free, maximising the recyclability and reusability of bottles and plastic containers. More significantly still, the bottles can also be reused.
“We’ve had huge interest in this product – even from the States,” said Mr Radford. “All the wineries in the Napa Valley recycle instead of reuse. But now, using this adhesive, they can wash labels off and reuse the bottles, which is unique. It’s going to save the industry millions in energy.”
The adhesive reacts with water, allowing the label to come off whole without leaving any ghosting or shadowing on the bottle. The more complex challenge is making this work with a PP or PE label.
“Clearly, water can’t penetrate through the face of a filmic label,” Mr Radford explained. “so, we’ve developed an adhesive that allows water to penetrate
the edges of the label, removing the face stock without any ghosting or build-up of residue. We’ve just had the first approval in mainland Europe for that, and it’s going to be produced at a considerable volume.”
Loyal partnerships
For a company with the longevity of Smith & McLaurin, it is no wonder that long-term relationships with both customers and suppliers are highly valued. The company’s offering of a niche service provides its partners a key position in the market and keeps them coming back.
“We’ve got customers that have been with us longer than the 19 years I have been here,” said Mr Radford. “Our traditional customer base is second or
third generation. If we’re lucky enough to meet the original customer, they’ll often say: ‘is such-and-such still working at Smith & McLaurin? I met them 40 years ago.’ And on our team, the average tenure is 14 years. We had one lady who left recently who had been working here 50 years to the day.”
The strength and loyalty of the Smith & McLaurin supply chain was tested recently when a large industry supplier went on strike, causing massive repercussions across the sector. “Luckily, due to the long-standing relationships we’ve got, all our suppliers supported us, otherwise we’d have had significant supply issues over the last 18 months.” Mr Radford said. “Everyone struggled for supply. However;
we managed to maintain a supply to all existing customers. I’m not saying it was easy – far from it. But we kept our customers supplied during this period.”
This loyalty, both from suppliers and towards customers, reflects Smith & McLaurin’s corporate structure. Though it is no longer family run, it remains privately owned. “And really, its personally owned,” said Managing Director Pat Kennedy. “We don’t just manage and run it, we own any problems with the company. We own the good and we own the bad.”
“This allows us to make instant decisions to help deliver the products our customers need. The entire management team, up to and including myself, will make themselves
available to any of our customers regardless of size. We believe having the decision makers involved throughout the process is a key component of the advantages offered by Smith & McLaurin. Adapt is not just in the product range, it is the way we operate as a company.”
