“We were one of the first people in the industry to bring laminating to the UK and have always been at the forefront of decorative print finishing,” says business development director Richard Pinkney.

“We have neither deviated from our core specialism nor ventured into print. Yet 95% of our customers are printers and we are now one of the biggest players in our field. We could have been one of the last in our region thanks to the floods.” 

The challenge

The storm came on Boxing Day 2015, hitting West Yorkshire with what Pinkney calls, with commendable understatement, a “sustained period of heavy rain”. It was a catastrophic deluge: rivers burst their banks, sewage systems overran, a metre of rain fell in one 24-hour period, pitching homes along with 300 or so businesses into deep water.

The industrial estate on which Celloglas had based itself for 25 years was not spared, with the company’s unit left waist deep. Sinks and loos were wrenched off walls, the canteen was submerged under water that also claimed a forklift truck, three lorries, including a 17-tonner, and a dozen or so finishing machines.

Everything went: one B1 flatbed die-cutter, two Heidelberg cylinders, three laminators, fiver Polar gluing machines and a Polar guillotine, two silk-screen printing lines, varnishing kit, an A0 platen along with film, hazardous varnishes and other consumables. 

The total insurance claim was just over £2m.

Fortunately for Celloglas, the company was comprehensively covered, meaning that everything from equipment to loss of earnings could be claimed back from the insurer. The big worry for Pinkney was not the legitimacy of the claim – nobody could dispute a write-off on this scale. The killer question was how fast could the company pull itself from the mud, re-equip itself and get going again.

“You can’t just buy the kind of equipment we need off the shelf,” explains Pinkney. 

“And even once you’ve got it, how long will it take you to put your business back together? Six months? Nine? Have you got that time? 

“It was a scary moment for us. When you fall victim to a flood you lose the ability to do your job – some print sector companies never recovered. And for the those that do, it’s a long process of getting up and running again. 

“This flood could have been the end of this site, one we’ve been on for about a quarter of a century and on which, for the last decade have really built up momentum for growth.”

The method 

Momentum switched to the clean-up. Pinkney’s team had to work fast, tot up the extent of losses and file a claim – it was the first firm in Leeds to do so. Such haste was thanks to an ‘emergency organisation plan’, co-ordinating all staff on a well-choreographed rapid response. Six managers were allocated specific areas of focus – suppliers, machinery, property, the insurance claim, loss of earnings and customers. The rest were detailed cleaning duties.

A smaller company could be “overburdened”, admits Pinkney. Fortunately Celloglas has been in business for around 60 years and has a total roll call of 100 staff across four sites; two in Reading and one in Leicester as well as the waterlogged Leeds base with around 26 employees.

He reassured staff they would be paid and told them to return on 5 January for the big clear-up. Donning boiler suits and face masks they hosed and swept, dumping tonnes of non-hazardous waterlogged waste, such as ruined paperstock, into skips.

Cleaning up after a flood can be dangerous, involving contaminated water and toxic industrial chemicals that have to be disposed of in special containers. Celloglas took health-and-safety advice from Prism consultancy and the Environment Agency. 

It tapped into regional and industry expertise from Leeds Enterprise Partnership (LEP), the BPIF and the Printing Charity, which gave staff emergency payments of £250 each. Meanwhile, managers set about replacing stock and machines and account executives phoned and emailed customers.

Luckily for Celloglas, the upstairs computers survived the deluge while the hard drive was stored off site. On it was an up-to-date asset register that was to prove critical. A lot of companies, he explains, have a register but rarely update it, so machinery pricing and other details are way out of date.

“It helps in so many ways because it keeps you looking at the market and where you want to be in five or 10 years’ time. So when you come to replace kit, as we were forced to do on a huge scale, we had a pretty clear idea what we wanted, and this speeded up decision making.”

Strong relationships with suppliers “really paid off”, he says, with many of them “going that extra mile” to replace equipment: a London Sakurai dealer made available a demo spot machine within a week; a local laminating company delivered a small-format machine “to get us up and running”.

Pinkney goes on: “A steady stream of concise communications let customers know we were up for business. We worked with staff in our Leicester site and booked a team of four people into a local hotel. Before long work was moving back and forth between sites as momentum grew.”

Pinkney was keen not only to renew that momentum but use the floods as an opportunity to create new drive. “Floods overwhelmed our ground floor and brought forward a decision to invest. Floods are dreadful and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone, but they did present us with the opportunity to upgrade our equipment and target new areas. We grabbed that opportunity.”

Around 10 new machines were installed over the next nine months including two Sakurai silkscreen spot machines, laminating machines – two Billhofer EK76s, a Paperplast Dry 80/76 thermal laminator and a KM 1200 – and a Polar guillotine.

Three of those new machines, two Kama ProFold 74 folder-gluers and a Moll Vantage folder, helped Celloglas launch a new brand, Thefolderworks, to offer high-speed folder creation with several finishes. Lamination, spot and all-over varnish, glitter, glow-in-the-dark and soft finishes, Pinkney hoped, would nudge the business towards new customers and broader geographic markets. 

“The two new folder-gluers gave us more flexibility and volume output. But as well as perfomance we wanted to expand the geographic reach of our trade finishing services from Yorkshire into Lancashire and more northern areas.”

The result

After the storm comes the reckoning: “The floods were a disaster and could have had far more appalling consequences for the company. But in some ways they became a blessing in disguise. They gave us the opportunity to upgrade our equipment, which would have taken us another 10 years to get where we are now. The flood devastation forced us on to the fast track.”

Those Kama machines, for example, had been on the Celloglas radar for five years after Pinkney saw them at Drupa 2012. He was won over by their speed and quality of finish, but at the time “we couldn’t really justify investment”.

He adds: “Although we have this fantastic kit, little has really changed: it’s the same materials but the kit is better and faster, the quality is fantastic and the throughput great. Before, we had more kit than people; now the equipment is better and faster, so three machines do work once done by five - whereas we could do 800 plastic wallets an hour we now do 3,000.

Thefolderworks has its own website because “we wanted to create this as a specialist department and standalone part of the business rather than something just bolted on”. And the last three months of last year saw the overall company start to improve on the previous year. 

Pinkney says: “This January we were ahead of where we were in 2015; we have made a full recovery and are better than we were previously. We have upgraded the premises with watertight doors and barriers across shutters to make it watertight to one metre.

“And we have done a lot of work promoting Celloglas and Thefolderworks and have a more interactive web presence, which we promote on a monthly basis. We have a promotional video to complement the finishing side and are one of the best equipped sites in the UK. Now it’s about letting people know what we do.” 

VITAL STATISTICS 

Celloglas 

Location Leeds with additional premises in Leicester and Reading  

Inspection host Business development director Richard Pinkney

Size Staff: 100; Turnover: £12m 

Established 1950s

Products Special finishes for a wide range of short- to medium-run commercial work, including wallets and board envelopes, die-cut cartons, magazine covers, specialist packaging as well as products for the cosmetics, food and drink industries

Kit Two Sakurai silkscreen spot machines, two Billhofer EK76s, a Paperplast Dry 80/76 thermal laminator and a KM 1200, Polar guillotine, two Kama ProFold 74 folder-gluers, Moll Vantage folder

Inspection focus Turning a disaster into an opportunity

TOP TIPS

Find out if you are at risk The Environment Agency website has a facility to enable users to check whether they are in a high-risk area by entering their postcode.

Flood warnings Sign up for 24-hour flood warnings via an automated service, also provided free on the Environment Agency website.

Prepare a flood plan It should include protective actions and a map locating service shut-off points, such as fuse boxes and stopcocks, and protective materials such as sandbags.

Prepare an emergency plan Prioritise action, allocate specific tasks to individual employees and draw up a schedule of works that can be extended a few months if needed.

Sort out your insurance Make sure your insurance cover is comprehensive and covers employee wages as well as buildings, machines and sundries. Using a broker was “invaluable,” says Pinkney, as they can fight your corner and get things moving.

List and photograph flood damage Take pictures of the building and kit and check before salvaging goods and repairing damage – insurers may recommend certain tradespeople.

Update your asset register Make sure you have up-to-date kit valuations and keep an eye on emerging technology, so you can make faster purchasing decisions.

Think about how you might want to replace kit If the worst happened it might not be possible (or even desirable) to replace like for like and new kit can open up new opportunities.

Communicate Keep customers and other stakeholders informed as the business gets back on track, and be sure to spread the word about any new services.