Logtek Limited Having been around since the late 90s, Logtek Ltd is well acquainted with the intricate work needed to put sustainability at the forefront of the packaging industry, and with its dedicated team, the business is ready for 2022 to be just as successful as 2021
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n March of 2021, Logtek celebrated its 25th anniversary; a milestone that recognized its success as a returnable transit packaging solution for major retail stores such as Marks & Spencer and Aldi. “We are part of the global Schoeller Allibert manufacturing business, and started off as part of the Linpac Packaging Group,” begins Lisa Tank, the Managing Director of the Birmingham business. Born in response to customer needs and originally used mostly for produce delivery in retail supply chains, the Logtek service was a way of managing returnable transit equipment to protect and control those packaging assets. “Because there are usually several millions of pounds worth of value on our customer’s balance sheet, Logtek was created in direct response to helping grocers manage these assets around the supply chain. “The focus is on reusing (hence ‘returnable packaging’) and it’s about moving this equipment efficiently
throughout a retailer supply chain. All produce has to be transported through retail supply chains in what is referred to as secondary packaging and our job is to make sure that packaging (crates, dollies, pallets and so on) is well managed and moves through the supply chain efficiently, and are washed and repaired ready for the next cycle,” she says. Delivering this service to retail customers means that the company has been able to develop four operational sites across the UK; purely to facilitate and support this impressive efficiency.
Service delivery Additionally, the growth in its facilities has also meant an expansion in the catalogue of products that Logtek can offer to its clients. “We built a small business in Spalding, Lincolnshire, that was originally focused on renting equipment to farmers and local agricultural businesses for seasonal use. The idea was to have rental equipment available for seasonal
produce like strawberries or asparagus. That rental part of the business has consistently grown, and has allowed us to add a greater range of products. It’s not all about hand-held Maxinest trays anymore; there are dollies, pallets, and bulk containers that are used widely across the agricultural markets and meat producers. “Now, we are widening our horizons even further with products that have been developed specifically for beverage and automotive markets for example. The Schoeller Allibert Group are supportive of growing the rental business and the focus is very much on offering all our customers, globally, a wide range of ways in which to realize savings and deliver efficiencies in using Returnable Transit Equipment. The rental service has grown significantly, and we hope that it will continue to do so,” Lisa shares. As she emphasizes, the point of a returnable transit packaging item is to allow its use to be extended to any point in the supply chain, in order to support with sustainable and cost effective solutions and removing the use of wasteful one-trip packaging methods. “The other new piece of technology that we are building into our bulk containers is SmartLink, which is a bespoke trackand-trace system, and enables users of our rental products to see where their
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