den age for television. Remember those classic adverts for your favourite chocolate bars? About the same time as some people were watching their favourite programmes, interspersed with those ads, they were also sitting down to eat their first “TV dinner” ready meal. Well, chances are that at least some of that chocolate bar and ready meal packaging was supplied by flexible packaging specialist KM Packaging Services Ltd, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.Since its formation in 1984, KM Packaging has dedicated its resources to developing flexible packaging solutions for food manufacturers and processing companies. During that time, as well as targeting the UK market, the company has also created an international profile with long-standing customers, distributors and partners in countries and regions as far afield as the Americas, South Africa, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.
Commercial Director Graham Holding attributes KM’s longevity to innovation and vision. Its pioneering approach led the firm to revolutionise the ready meals industry with lidding film for aluminium foil trays in the late 1990s, paving the way for a new generation of cost-effective, freezable and ovenable meals which would subsequently grace dinner tables across the world. The fourth generation of KM films is about to be launched as the company continues to innovate in order to meet the needs of this growth sector.
Mr Holding explained: “30 years ago not many people worried about what happened to packaging after the consumer had unwrapped a product. Today, as well as meeting the recycling challenges at the end of its life, the packaging has to work to minimise food waste by keeping products fresher for longer. In this way the contribution towards reducing carbon in life cycles is truly amazing.
“The food and packaging sectors have changed almost beyond recognition in the last 30 years; many of the KM team have been instrumental in packaging developments that have improved presentation and technical performance and freshness of some of our favourite food products, as
well as creating packing for brand new products. At KM we have stayed close to retail trends and constantly looked for new ways to innovate, to provide our customers with solutions to meet anticipated demand – and by and large we’ve got it right.”
