Parkside Flexibles Group will now be known simply as Parkside with a new logo to match.
Managing director Nick Smith, who joined from Sun Chemical in April 2014, said the change reflected how the business had evolved over more than four decades.
It diversified into flexo printing in the mid 1970s and that became the company's exclusive print technique. Most recently the company has concentrated on developing packaging products in the food sector, particularly convenience and snack food, and home personal care and pharmaceutical markets.
“We’ve got a great opportunity in areas like that. It makes sense to refresh the brand. We’re not a flexo printer, we’re a packaging solutions provider,” Smith said.
“We want to present ourselves differently; to present what we are rather than what we were in the past. We are trying to post a clear message.”
The 134-staff business is headquartered in Normanton, Yorkshire, with 95 employees based in the UK and 39 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a site which opened five years ago and which Smith said was doing "really well".
Smith said the company had doubled turnover – currently around £30m, since 2005, when it was rescued out of administration.
The flexible packaging firm and its non-trading parent, Parkside International, went into administration on 23 December that year.
The company retains many clients from before this time as well as a number of staff who have been with the company for 20 years or more. Smith said the company was proud of its longstanding flexo clients and would continue to offer them the same high-quality print work but wanted to tell the world that its offering had broadened. It grew sales by 12% in 2014.
It has invested more than £1.5m in new technology and launched its APEX (advanced packaging expertise) strategy, focusing on reclosable, easy-open and compostable packaging and labels, at the Packaging Innovations show in Birmingham in February.
The company’s technical experts work with universities and other research associations to develop new products such as combined film and foil lamination, film peel and reseal closure systems to compostable triplex laminates, printed vacuum skin packs, plastics with antibacterial coating and high value-added embedded image technology.
“It’s clear that we needed to grow. We’ve spent the last three years focusing on building innovation capacity," Smith added.
“There’s a whole area of business that people haven’t been particularly aware of. It’s important that we reposition ourselves as being more than just a printer.”
The company runs four WindmoeIler Hoelscher flexo presses and installed a 10-colour machine in February.
In 2013 it invested in laser scribing technology.
