Analysis: employment

Based on Landell Mills data, the findings only serve to reinforce a depressing picture of the packaging industry as a prospective employer. At a time of year when school leavers and graduates are flooding the job market, will any of them consider a career in packaging?

There has already been much publicity surrounding the closure of major packaging plants across the UK, showing it’s tough enough for those already working in the industry.

Alcan, Amcor, DS Smith, Nampak and Polimoon have all announced UK factory closures and the resulting redundancies in the last year. It is difficult to deny that many dominant manufacturers are pulling out of the UK market and that jobs are going abroad with them.

“While, two years ago, we saw many end user companies making senior pack development staff redundant, pushing innovation back to suppliers, the last 12 months have seen more jobs go and some go overseas,” said Mercury Search and Selection managing director Dani Novick. “In part, this off-shoring has been as a result of moving to lower-cost countries but also includes centralisation of development at company HQs either in Europe or the US.”

Not all doom and gloom
The words consolidation and M&A have sounded the death knell for many packaging producers and thousands of packaging jobs, but it’s not all doom and gloom. There are still many core companies creating innovative products and services that will need staff for the foreseeable future. “These companies will continue to provide exciting and rewarding careers and, ultimately, will find the right staff; the question is, will they be home-grown or from overseas?” asks Novick.

If the Confederation of British Industry’s (CBI’s) warning about the “dire” quality of school leavers is anything to go by, finding the right staff in the UK might be a problem. Many industry insiders agree that a lack of applied science and technical engineering graduates and poor education about the packaging industry as a prospective employer are endangering its future.

Despite redundancies, there remain skills shortages across the industry as a whole. Often, operations roles need hands-on training. Skilled blow-moulding technicians are needed in plastics, corrugator operators in corrugated and Artpro trained staff in printed packaging.

Several employers have very good training provision and taking the Institute of Packaging Diploma (IoP) continues to be a popular way of gaining packaging knowhow, but it can still be a struggle to find suitable trainees. Novick agrees: “There needs to be a shift in expectations and a recognition of the value of skilled and semi-skilled labour.”  

Manufacturers realise that skilled staff are crucially important to business, as RPC Oakham personnel manager Gillian Doughty explains: “Training is a vital factor in helping us to develop our skills level in order to maintain our competitiveness. RPC recognises people as being one of the most important areas of investment in the business, and we have continued to recruit in key areas and succession planning.  We have also worked closely with the Sector Skills Councils to attract prospective employees to the polymer sector.”

Decision-making goes off-shore
Amicus national officer for the GPM paper and packaging sector Peter Ellis suggests a starker reality: “There simply aren’t that many jobs available.” The union has had its work cut out negotiating many compulsory redundancy packages for the 19,000 employees who have lost packaging manufacturing jobs in the last five years and it insists: “We want to maintain well-paid jobs in a secure industry. There remain well-paid jobs, but decisions are not being made on a European level by international companies. They are remote from Europe in general and the UK in particular. They want to shut UK businesses down.”

The UK job market is in a state of flux. The number of jobs is going down, but the type and location of key jobs is changing to meet demand. Newcomers are now more likely to take on business development, management and sales roles instead of getting into production. Key staff are also more likely to find work in the North of England, the Midlands, Wales and Northern Ireland than ever before as the number of manufacturing jobs decrease, particularly in Scotland and the South.  

Yet packaging still makes up 5.5 per cent of total manufacturing in the UK and, as such, prospective employees needn’t be totally pessimistic about their future in the industry. As PF chief executive Ian Dent puts it: “We are still a very significant part of the UK manufacturing industry.”

The figures
- Packaging is the ninth-largest manufacturing industry in the UK, turning over £8.5bn

- There are 2,430 packaging production units in the UK compared to 2,850 in 2000

- Packaging production employs 84,000 people compared to 103,000 in 2000

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