Cepac relocates Woodhill ops to Rawcliffe site

Cepac has relocated its subsidiary Woodhill Printers to its newly expanded Rawcliffe Bridge site.

Following a £2m investment and a site expansion of 3,500sqm to 21,500sqm, the corrugated specialist is now working through plans to relocate both staff and equipment from Woodhill’s premises in Alfreton, Derbyshire to the expanded base.

One of Woodhill's five staff is set to move to the Rawcliffe Bridge site, while the other four will leave the company after turning down relocation offers from Cepac. The equipment that will transfer over has not been confirmed yet but movement of staff and assets, as well as the shutdown of the Woodhill premises, is expected to have completed by the end of the month.

“We view this move as very positive for the business,” said group sales and marketing director Steve Moss.

“It has come following a lot of communication with businesses to assure them that our output will still be to the highest quality. To them, this will not seem like a sudden transition.

“Business is simply moving to a single site now and we expect this whole process to go very smoothly.”

Rawcliffe site general manager Richard Moore said: “This is a very exciting time for Cepac as we complete our expansion to enable increased capacity and capability.”

Cepac now hopes that Rawcliffe Bridge, which will have 127 staff post-transfer, will enable the enhancement and expansion of its offering to the dangerous goods sector.

Chemical and combustibles specialist Woodhill was acquired by Cepac in September 2015 and has been operating as a satellite plant, integrated with Rawcliffe Bridge under a single management team since the acquisition.

Meanwhile, Cepac’s has recently completed a £1m expansion of its Doncaster factory, which involved doubling its footprint and installing an HP Scitex 17000 corrugated press - which was installed in the spring. The site extension was also slated to complete in the spring, but was pushed back to enable the office space to be reconfigured.

“In Doncaster, we have been able to effectively extend our offer and improve our workflow. We are now looking to grow our relationships with our existing customers, as well as building new ones too,” said Moss.

The Doncaster site is also set to house a beta version of HP's PageWide C500 Press for direct-to-board corrugated applications, which was announced at Drupa earlier this year.

As well as Doncaster and Rawcliffe, Cepac, part of the HSA Group, has additional sites in Darlington and Rotherham.