Newton Print celebrates 40th anniversary

A DEVON-BASED printed packaging company is celebrating its 40th anniversary in the business this year (2023).

Newton Print Ltd, which specialises in assisting food and drink producers to bring their products to market on time, first opened as Newton Printers in 1983.

Tim Besley, Founder and Managing Director at Newton Print Ltd, which is based in Newton Abbot, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. The company started in 1983, initially as a traditional printers run by my father, who ran a stationery business too, and I before we moved into luxury brochures and specialist direct mail printing and more.

“We then started producing food packaging and now work across all forms of retail packaging. Whilst we still produce an amount of traditional ‘commercial’ print, retail packaging represents almost all of our business.

“We are not just printers; we go beyond that simple transaction and are always customer-curious, working closely with our clients to ensure they are presented with every option for what they might possibly need, and we look at what value we can add. For example, we go and visit clients, see how their products are produced and packed, do an audit of their needs and make suggestions of how we can improve their packaging and generally make life easier for them.

“When I started working for my father’s stationery business in the school holidays, I never could have predicted that we’d end up buying a little printworks and growing it to something as substantial as the operation we have today. I’d like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to all our staff and customers, who this wouldn’t have been possible without over the past 40 years.

“Our niche has been packaging for food producers but also have clients in healthcare, beauty, lifestyle and DIY industries and now, in our 40th year, we’re working on growing our overall retail packaging offering to cover all sectors.”

During its 40-year history there have been many changes in the business including moving to new purpose-built premises in 2001 and investing in the latest equipment.

In 2021, Newton Print spent £120,000 on extending its production facility to provide its customers with bespoke shorter print-runs for any printed packaging they may be planning.

“This extension and upgrade to our in-house facility enables us to speed up our production of packaging especially sleeves, auto-lock and crash-lock boxes, single-line and multi-glued boxes, and wallets and pocket folders.

“It allows us to complete jobs more quickly and improve delivery speeds. As well as giving our customers the benefit of being able to use us for shorter print-runs up to 300,000. They can now more easily trial products for particular events or showcase new flavours or have tailormade packaging for promotional activities such as competitions and limited editions.

“By improving the speed of our operation, we’re increasing efficiency and that in turn has a knock-on impact with regards to the energy we’re saving when producing our clients’ packaging requirements, which is great for everyone’s sustainability moving forward.”

Newton Print made the decision to be one of a handful of UK printers who are carbon balanced. Under this initiative, the business is audited by Carbon Co who measure energy use, recycling, waste policies, safe disposal of chemicals amongst other metrics to calculate a company’s carbon footprint. Once the figure has been confirmed, Newton Print then donate an appropriate sum to the World Land Trust to invest in environmental schemes.

Tim added: “This Carbon Balanced scheme is also a huge opportunity for our customers to communicate the sustainability of their own packaging – it’s something consumers are actively looking for when making a buying purchase, so if they can see that they’re directly contributing to a real-life conservation project it’s a win-win. We’ve had some of our clients use this Carbon Balanced status to tell a story around their own packaging, as it’s directly contributing to the protection of valuable yet fragile habitats around the world.”

Newton Print has an impressive reputation, with 97% of customers rating them five stars on Feefo for speed and exceeding expectations, and 98% giving top marks for friendliness. For five consecutive years, Feefo has recognized their excellence with the prestigious Platinum Trusted Service accreditation. With Direct Mail Automation Software like Postalytics at their disposal, Newton Print efficiently manages high-volume direct mail projects, enhancing both speed and personalization to meet and surpass client expectations.  

To find out more about Newton Print Ltd, please visit https://www.newtonprint.co.uk or call 01626 368986.