British Looseleaf (BLL) assets had been acquired by the directors of Reflections Print Finishing back in the autumn of 2023, but afterwards the outfit was negatively impacted by events that ultimately led to the collapse of Reflections.
BLL had specialised in bespoke boxes and binders.
Rapidity, which has production sites in central London and in Sidcup, has taken on five former BLL employees including commercial director Ilker ‘Rob’ Kayabasi, who heads up the new team and brings 35 years’ experience in bespoke packaging to the role.
Multi-award-winning Rapidity, Printweek’s reigning Post-press Company of the Year, has developed a growing business in luxury packaging for influencer marketing, retail, product launches and proposals.
The additional personnel and production kit will allow the company to take on longer run projects.
Managing director Paul Manning commented: “We’re absolutely delighted to welcome Rob and the team to Rapidity for what is already turning out to be a very successful new enhanced packaging department.
“Since Covid we’ve been focusing on bringing in new diverse sectors to our business that can appeal to our customer base, and luxury packaging has been quite the natural addition to our business.
“Rob and the team are exceptionally experienced in producing quality packaging and we know that by combining their skill with our firepower and quality production system we can bring some great packaging work to the market.”
The new team will be based at Rapidity’s 1,394sqm litho facility in Sidcup, which is ideal for longer run production and has the necessary space for the type of work envisaged.
Kayabasi began his career at BLL as a temp and spent 35 years at the company, ultimately “running the day-to-day operations until the end”.
He said: “I am very excited about bringing our collective experience to Rapidity at a time that they are already experiencing huge growth in this area.
“The demise of BLL following the failure of Reflections has been disappointing but we feel like that is behind us now and we’re very excited about what the future brings and demonstrating to Rapidity and Rapidity’s customers what we are capable of.”
Manning said Rapidity had acquired a variety of ancillary equipment including box creasers, clamps and riveting presses as well as a Dyss CAD cutter.
The firm provides a wide range of creative print services and is also planning further investments later this year.
The Sidcup site is home to a four-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 75 with coater, Muller Martini stitching line, and Quadient folder/inserter for mailing.
The 1,300sqm London facility on Goswell Road has Rapidity’s small- and large-format digital printing setup, including four Xerox Iridesse presses along with a SwissQprint Nyala 4 and two Canon Colorado roll-fed printers, alongside associated post-press kit.
The addition of the new team takes Rapidity’s total number of employees to 56, with current turnover of around £8.5m and organic growth running at around 25%.
