Watershed Packaging through the years
Watershed Packaging is a privately owned Flexible Print and Packaging company. It was established by John Waters over 25 years ago. Since it’s formation the company now operates from 4 different sites across the UK.
Originally Watershed began supplying Packaging Machinery and Consumables working from a small stable based in Leeds. The transformation of this company from then until now in 2017 is remarkable.
Taking a brief step into the history of Watershed Packaging, we can tell you that in 1996, Watershed aquired ‘Logo Tape’, a Printed Tape manufacturer based in Wales. From then, we became manufacturers of Printed Tape. Please have a look at our website: http://www.ukprintedtape.co.uk/
We were rapidly excelling in the Printed Tape market so entering a brand new market was an exciting experience for us. During 1998, we wanted to expand our businesss and become Label printers and Printed Film manufacturers. We aquired ‘Ace Printing’, a Flexographic printing company based in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. In the years following this, we purchased our first MPS UV Flexo Printing Press which was housed at our Leeds head office.
10 years later, we purchased Aurora Colours in South Wales, we then combined the Tape division and Aurora into one purpose built factory which houses multiple UV Presses and Flat Bed Presses. After rapid growth, the Watershed Packaging group acquired ‘The Label Store’ based in Beverley, Hull in Yorkshire.
In 2010, we extended our Leeds head office to house one of the Flexographic Presses from our Kent site. We expanded the building as part of our strategical plan to increase capacity in West Yorkshire.
During 2012 we ventured into brand new markets as we launched our Shrink Sleeve division and now we can supply Shrink Sleeve Labels worldwide.
By 2013, we were reaching maximum capacity at our Leeds headquarters. Plans for a new head office were unveiled, with the support of Leeds City Council we created over 40 new jobs at our state of the art facility. Construction work then began for our new manufacturing headquarters in Leeds at Thornes Farm. This project would see a £5 million reinvestment into the business.
In 2014 our beautiful headquarters was completed and we relocated our Leeds headquarters business to Thornes Farm Way in the new Aire Valley Leeds Enterprize Zone. Relocating to this new premises allowed us to expand our operations in Leeds as our business is rapidly expanding and growing.
Our recent investments include our own in-house Studio, in-house Platemaking Facility, and we invested in more market-leading machinery which now enables us to manufacture Die Cut Lids. We are extremely proud to have achieved AA Grade BRC high risk accreditation at our Leeds headquarters and AA Grade BRC accreditation at our Wales site.
We recently invested £2 Million on our latest Press which is the first of its specification in the UK. This innovative investment is so exciting for Watershed Packaging. This is extremely pertinent if you look back at our humble beginnings and see how much we have grown and developed into now being one of Europe’s prominent suppliers of Flexible Printed Packaging.
