Secura Labels - 30 years young


2012 will see Secura Labels celebrate 30 years in business. (and two employees 20 years with the company) Back in January 1982 Secura Labels was to produce its first labels.. as a one man operation, but, within a short space of time the first employee was required and so too a move from the owners garage to larger premises. In these early days Secura where mainly supplying "local" companies with simple one and two colour labels. These produced on a 4" Press that, 30 years on, is still with us. This first employee was soon joined by another and help required was also sought from the wife and father of the original owner. Due to lease issues (a supermarket brought the land!) a further move was required and at around the same time the original employee left to start out on his own... and now "heads" a multi million pound Label Company.

The staff soon expanded to 4 full time and 2 part time, in March 1990 Simon made this number 5 full time and 2 part, and in April (the 1st!) of the same year a new home was found, where Secura stayed until September 2006. A further operator was found shortly after this move, and a change of personal was seen in the Artwork dept. with a further part time member to assist in accounts. At this time we operated two 4" Flexo Presses, one able to produce plain and one colour labels, the second could print up to 3 colours, at a push, along with 4 "hot foil" machines. A 7" 4 colour central impression press was brought, but we never really got to grips with this and in 1992 our 6 colour Nilpeter was introduced. This press moved us on leaps and bounds, allowing us to produce high quality "Process" work, and in sizes much larger than had prevosuly been able to. With the "new" / extra work we soon required a improved finishing machine and our first "Brand New" machine duly arrived, an A B Graphic rewind unit.

The late 90`s saw a large turnover in staff, with another leaving to make his own way in labelling and now the successful owner of a £1,000,000 + turn over business. A further Nilpeter press, was brought, this one from Holland and requiring some "TLC". This extra press saw us enter into the "blank" / plain label market in a way we hadn't followed to this point.

As the new millennium dawned the original owners decided it was time to take retirement and we welcomed Capital Ventures as our new owners in November 2000. We think it fair to say the first few years did not go as well as we all had hoped, with several of the new Board moving on, and Secura working under several different MD`s. We also had to make some redundancies and a further member of Staff left to start his own printing business and he currently goes from strength to strength.

2005 was a landmark year for us, with current MD Mark Budz taken on by a further "acting" MD, Simon Matthews. A visit to Labelexpo soon followed, with Mark and Simon joined by Simon (Miller) on this trip. Within a short space of time plans where formulated, return of investment penned. 2006 saw a move to new premises, a new 4 colour 13" Press, a further rewinder, and a Ben Bunch Automatic Fanfolder. The investments didn't stop here, with the Board fully backing this continued move forward, a sheeting unit, automatic "Turret" rewind unit and in 2011 a further 13" Press.

In 30 years we have seen many changes, it can be remembered buying our first fax machine to allow for quicker Proof approvals.. (rather than posting) trouble was that none of the then customers had a fax machine! Plain labels where a strange sight (why would you want a plain label?) but the arrival of Thermal Transfer machines means that a vast percentage of our production is now that of plain labels. This increase in the use of Thermal Transfer machines at "end users" has also been a major reason in the slow down in the sale of labels produced on our Hot Foil Presses. At one time we had five of these Presses and two operators. now just one.
30 years ago, a barcode was a rare, QR codes, RFID, Digital Print unheard of, our artwork was set with "letteraset"!, and each individual "step" on our plates done separately via a camera. We have an old raw materials price list from the early days and interestingly we are paying just under 9% more for our most common paper.. take into account the effect of volume and we wonder if in fact we where buying the same qtys. now as then what we may be paying?

Throughout our 30 years the Trade customer has been important to us, and while we still welcome Trade work, we, through the hard work of the sales team, have a vast range of "direct" customers, from the local honey producer requiring 500 labels through to multi-nationals, requiring runs of millions, along with "call off" requirements, Ribbons, Thermal Machines and more. We still speak to customers who are working for companies that we supplied 30 years ago.. or at least we can follow the roots of current customers back to these and we also take pride that at least 3 successful competitors started out with us. Our Staff, as ever, are important to us, and are pleased that following Ian`s landmark 20 years service in 2011, both Gill and Simon celebrate their respective 20 years service during 2012.

We take this opportunity to thank our Staff, Customers, Suppliers and the Board, and look forward to the next 30 years!