Welcome to the first edition of Viscose Voice for 2024!
In this edition we focus on our business events and goals for 2024, the launch of our new ecommerce site and lots more! Read on to find to discover our plans for the year…
2024: A Look Ahead
Farm Shop & Deli Show:
We’re exhibiting at the Farm Shop and Deli show between the 29th of April and the 1st of May at the NEC in Birmingham. Run by William Reed, the show is one of four that make up the UK food & Drink shows. With more than 25,000 visitors expected to attend, we’re going to be busy and look forward to meeting our customers old and new, so pop along to stand M259 and say hello.
Click the link below to reserve your ticket.
USA Trip:
We’re heading to the USA in March to visit our key distributors of our plastic-free shrink sleeves. The trip will take Emma (our Managing Director) and Seren (Marketing & Sales Executive) to Cleveland, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois. The team are looking forward to building even stronger relationships in person with our distributors respected teams and aligning our business plans to further grow our plastic-free shrink sleeves (or celons as they are known in the USA).
Our distributors have already warned us we’ll need our thermals at the ready and prepare to brave the cold once we get there!
2024 Sustainability Goals:
In 2023, we invested heavily in our factory including the installation of a brand-new solar panel system that is expected to provide approximately 40% of our electricity usage. This year, we will be monitoring the system closely to understand how we can build on this system and increase our use of renewable energy.
We are looking to increase our use of RPET material by 20% as we assist customers in making the change from standard PET or PVC to this more environmentally friendly material, which runs the same as its PET counterpart.
As we do every year, we continue to strive for energy efficiency across our business, this year we will be making upgrades to our extrusion process for our plastic-free shrink sleeves and completing process improvements to reduce water usage.
Want to find out what else we’re doing in 2024? Read our full 2024 look ahead article here.
Cyber Essentials Plus
In early February we acquired our Cyber Essentials Plus certification, having acquired the Cyber Essentials certification at the end of 2023. This means we are committed and pledged to maintaining essential cyber security protection, important not only for our business and colleagues’ safety and wellbeing, but also you our customers too! Protecting people’s data is something we can happily get on board with and so this accreditation was a no-brainer for us! The project into acquiring this certification was led by our Financial Controller- Sara James and our 3rd party IT support. The team worked tirelessly to get this accreditation over the finish line. Well done team!
Launch of Our New E-commerce
We are launching our new look e-commerce function in Q1 – currently you can purchase plastic-free shrink sleeves easily online, and we are looking to expand this across our product range including our stock ROPPs and plastic caps. This will also allow us to dramatically lower MOQs and lead times on many popular items to single boxes which means increased flexibility for our customers!
Expanded Sales Team
During the latter half of 2023 we created two new Business Development Executive (BDE) positions which are solely focused on creating and nurturing new customer relationships and expanding our reach globally focusing on areas such as Europe and Asia. We welcomed Shireen Khanum to the team at the beginning of August last year and Metin Redzheb joined the team in January. Both have settled in well, bringing experience and knowledge to their respective roles, and can’t wait to start meeting customers.
Drinks Article
At the end of January, we published our first industry article on our website ‘Our Top Drinks Predictions For 2024’. The trends detailed include the continued growth of the no and low-alcohol sector, the rising awareness of the need to switch to alternative sustainable packaging and the surge in popularity of Asian drinks and flavours to name a few. If you are interested in discovering what’s lined up for the drinks world be sure to read the full article here.
Keep your eyes peeled for more content and articles coming over the next few months!
Staff profile: Olivia Davies
This month we spoke to Olivia Davies who is our Customer Account Manager for the caps & closures side of our business. Olivia has been with us for 18 months and has already become one of our in-house caps experts!
Olivia started at Viscose as a Customer Service Assistant in the caps & closures department. During the summer of last year, she was promoted to her current role. During her time with us, she has seen some big changes within our company namely the bringing in of our distributed caps & closures side of our business in house to our Swansea HQ in April 2023. Until then, we had historically always stored our caps & closures at a 3rd party warehouse. Olivia played a big part in implementing this project and continues to manage the stock within our warehouse today.
Typical day in the work-life of Olivia:
Customer engagement is Olivia’s priority daily. She is the main point of contact for all of our metal and plastic cap customers. So if you purchase these from us, you will know her well!
Olivia completes all our closure order processing and manages the orderbook daily.
She is also our in-house freight expert and therefore, oversees our transport requirements and deals with our freight partners daily, ensuring all our closures are brought in from the EU in readiness for customer’s order.
A big portion of Olivia’s day is centred around supply chain management. She liaises with our suppliers, orders all our closures stock, and instructs our warehouse when orders need to go.
Outside of work, Olivia loves travelling. Last year she visited Hungary, Spain, Malta, and Barbados. All of which she loved! She has recently returned from Krakow in Poland and is off to San Fransisco in the USA in the summer to visit a friend and she is already looking forward to it! In her spare time, Olivia volunteers for some local and non-local animal rescue charities. She supports charities such as Greenacres Rescue, Woodfield Animal Sanctuary and 8 Below Husky Rescue to name a few.
Olivia shared some interesting facts about herself with us- she used to run a bar in the evenings on what is now the famous Wind Street in Swansea city centre in her spare time. Olivia also has two of her own dogs, a Border Collie named Meg and a Lurcher named Max.
We asked Olivia to tell us what she likes most about working at Viscose:
“The people! I love the community feeling we have here. The Viscose family does genuinely feel like a big family and I consider the people here as friends not just colleagues.”
Thanks, Olivia, for your time with us for this edition.
Kitti’s baby shower
At the end of January, we held a baby shower in our office for the lovely mother-to-be Kitti Kovacs. Kitti is a member of our Sales and Services team and is already sorely missed now she is on maternity leave. During the baby shower, we played games and ate lots of cake! We wish Kitti and her baby all the best and we can’t wait to meet the little one very soon!
Vince’s retirement
At the beginning of February, we said goodbye to our very own stores man and company joker- Vince Moses who is retiring! Vince has been with us for 25 years and is a big part of our Viscose family. We want to thank Vince for his dedication and contributions to our business throughout his time with us and wish him all the best in his retirement! He’s already informed us he’s looking forward to having free time to play more golf!
Next Edition
Look out for our next edition in May, where we will debrief our show experience and lots more!
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