Company details for Macpac Ltd

Macpac Ltd has been a leading UK thermoforming manufacturer for over 40 years. They have been at the forefront of vacuum forming and thermoforming throughout this period and have pioneered many techniques for the industry. Macpac are ISO9001 and BRC/IOP accredited. They have an excellent recycling record with environmental credentials to match, being one of the first thermoforming companies in the UK to phase out the use of PVC in favour of PET and its recycled variant RPET.

They are perhaps best known for bespoke design and manufacture of packaging and trays. However in addition to bespoke packaging Macpac also manufacture ranges of semi bespoke clamshells and blisters known as Eurocels and the BlisterKing range of clamshells and blisters based on stock tools.

Bespoke Packaging and Trays:

Design - Macpac provide a complete service from the design concept through to production manufacturing and fulfilment. The experienced Macpac Real 3D design team provide an initial advisory service to identify the best type of packaging to fulfil the customers needs. The design process utilises the latest Solidworks software. Designs can be mocked up on screen that will incorporate the customer’s product and all graphic insert cards as a virtual finished pack. Customer’s can use this to make marketing presentations prior to deciding on the final design. It is also easy to make simple colour changes or adaptations of the design on screen before making the final decisions.

In House Tooling: A major advantage to the service Macpac provide is their In-house tool room facility. All tooling is made in-house so it is carefully planned into production schedules to make lead times as short as possible. Having complete control over production means that work can be prioritised to meet deadlines – something that would be very difficult to achieve externally. The in-house facility also enables cost to be controlled making Macpac tooling very competitive. The footprint of the thermoforming machinery running at Macpac is such that tooling costs can be kept low compared to other companies running very large footprint machines requiring bigger much more expensive tooling. Unless jobs made on these larger machines run into tens of millions of finished units the tooling cost is unlikely to be recovered, which is just one reason, why Macpac are so competitive. The tools are made from high grade Aluminium on CNC machinery that gives very high levels of precision. The resulting tools have very long lifespan and produce the highest quality thermoformings.

Manufacturing: All Macpac’s machines are Illig, considered by many to be to be the leading make of thermoforming machinery. Most of the traditional vacuum forming machines at Macpac have given way to modern new pressure forming machines. These are state of the art, energy efficient machines none of which are more than 5 years old. The fact that Macpac are BRC/IOP accredited means that they only use high quality films in the production of packaging. Combine this with the best possible machinery and precision tooling and you realise why Macpac is a leading UK manufacturer of blister packaging and thermoformed packaging.

Printed inserts: Macpac will design and produce all aspects of the blister cards, printed inserts and any other promotional material contained within the blister pack. They are just as at home producing this material from customer’s own artwork or working to a strict corporate brief with specified pantone colour references. They provide a very quick turnaround with competitive prices and can also offer to incorporate the printed matter into the final packs through their contract manufacturing/packing and fulfilment division.

Contract Packing: Macpac provide a complete design and manufacture to fulfilment service. Fulfilment could include product assembly as well as packing into the manufactured packs, incorporating any printed material such as backing cards, instruction leaflets etc. Heat-sealing, HF welding and ultrasonic welding are also a feature of Macpac’s contract packing service.

Eurocel Semi-Bespoke Packaging:

The Eurocel range of clamshell packaging is based on a series of stock tool plinth profiles with an infinite variety of add on shapes to afford a high level of customisation for an excellent fit. The stock profile reduces tooling costs, which can significantly reduce the unit cost of final packaging, particularly on shorter run contracts. The add-on shape can be a stock tool also, to further reduce cost, or it can be designed and made to precisely fit the customer product.

BlisterKing Blister packs from stock tooling:

The BlisterKing range is based on over 110 items of stock tooling. It is believed to be the largest collection of its kind in the UK and with such a wide variety of shapes and sizes to choose from it is likely that a variation to fit most applications will be found. To make the search for the best size pack easier, Macpac have a pack source tool on their website. If you measure your products’ length width and thickness and type the figures into the Packfinder it will automatically produce a list of packs that would suit your product. Simply choose the best fit – the website even allows a size for size print out of the pack to be run off your own printer to make it even easier to see how your product will fit in the pack. Because all the tooling exists there is no added cost to the customer making the BlisterKing range the most cost effective range of high quality packaging anywhere.

Macpac supply thermoformed packaging to a wide variety of industries. By virtue of being BRC/IOP accredited the company is a recognised supplier to the food, medical, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. In addition they supply large volumes of product into the automotive, DIY, electronic and general retail products sectors. Their product ranges include carded or heat sealed blisters, clamshells or clam packs, sandwich or trapped blisters, slide on blister packs, transit trays, food trays, shelf display trays, collation trays and boxed set trays. They also supply die cut packaging that can be overprinted.