SME UK Enterprise Awards 2024/ 38 Packaging Adhesives Manufacturer of the Year 2024 - Western Europe From its Hertfordshire headquarters, Cedesa Ltd serves as one of the UK’s leading chemical packaging solutions providers and chemical product manufacturers. Boasting an experienced team whose knowledge of all things related to adhesives and chemical packaging is unrivalled, the company offers up a signature range of own-brand, white labelproducts to many renowned industrial and retail organisations across both the UK and Europe. A market leader in every sense of the word, Cedesa’s high-quality products fulfil the needs of customers right across the continent. Established in 1988 after a partial management buyout of packaging operation Loctite UK, Cedesa is today guided by more than 35 years of direct industry experience and a robust knowledge of adhesives, sealants, and chemical manufacturing processes. Selling its goods to a number of the leading blue-chip companies operating across the global market, Cedesa’s chemical packaging solutions have been especially designed for the adhesive manufacturing industry and come in a variety of different forms, catering to every need in bespoke fashion. Instrumental in having forged Cedesa’s industry-leading reputation has been its state-of-the-art production facilities. After numerous recent upgrades, the site now possesses the ability to manufacture a range of engineering adhesives, filling and labelling equipment for tubes, bottles, syringes, as well as single and two-part cartridges. This is in addition to its vacuum forming and blister packing capabilities. Such technology lends itself to an ever-increasing product line made up of the likes of superglues, solvents, adhesives, and polymers. The company’s tremendous flexibility when it comes to its manufacturing ability is made possible by its engineering of everything itself in-house. Moreover, the high level of finished stock that it holds for its customers sees that the demand for its products is well managed and that there is a quick turnaround on customer orders. Cedesa is incredibly proud of the fact that it has become renowned for this just-in-time, on-demand service, with its on-time in-full (OTIF) service delivery record fully corroborated by more than 95% of its customer base. Other services on offer from Cedesa see it further utilise these facilities, as it also provides laboratory testing on the products that it makes, customer products, and toll-manufactured products. Beyond this, customers in search of a specific product volume when it comes to either developing entirely new products or matching their existing product numbers can also seek out the company’s services. All of this is executed atop an ISO 9001:2015 certification, highlighting the Cedesa team’s ongoing commitment to quality and continuous improvement. We have taken note of Cedesa particularly for its prowess concerning adhesive packaging, which the company has been manufacturing now for more than 25 years. Having worked in this sector for so long, there is not a single type of packaging out there that the company is not well-versed in, and its ability to totally fulfil the packaging needs of its customers, from concept through to creation, is one of its distinguishing features. By filling the likes of tubes, bottles, and cans, through to making cartons and labels, Cedesa visibly reduces the likes of supply chains and lead times. Whatever a customer’s product(s) may be, Cedesa’s industrial-grade machines can quickly and effectively deal with it in large quantities at a time, meaning that goods are produced swiftly and efficiently, without ever straying too far from the impeccable level of quality that has come to be associated with Cedesa after 36 years. This also goes hand in hand with the company’s contract filling service, which includes the likes of waxes, detergents, inks, dyes, and cleaners, which are channelled into a variety of industry types for every need. Furthermore, thanks to Cedesa’s unique chemical environment, which sees it set up well so as to help brands and industrial companies alike overcome the persistent issue of finding a filler/ packer combination than can help with finished packs, the efficiency of a client business can be measurably increased, and their every guideline rigorously adhered to. All of this from a competent and highly experienced manufacturing and adhesive packaging company that serves not just as a service provider, but a lasting business partner in driving success. Perhaps more so than its products, at the heart of the company’s success has always been its values, with these literally making up the identity of the brand. This is because the Cedesa name also serves as an acronym for its values. “C” stands for “customers always come first”, “E” is for “enriching the lives of employees”, “D” spans diversity, the second “E” is all about employees being empowered to make decisions, “S” sees the company’s safety-first prerogative, and finally, “A” stands for “achieving a return for our employee owners.” Operations Director Dariusz Brust explains it like this: “These values are not just words on a wall but the guiding principles that shape our actions and decisions every day. We are committed to upholding these values and ensuring that they remain the foundation of our organisation.” In fact, it is off the back of its adherence to these cornerstone values that Cedesa made a revolutionary decision four years ago, this being to implement the business’ transition from an ordinarily-ran company into an employee ownership trust, or EOT. An EOT is essentially a business model where a trust holds a company’s shares on its employees’ behalf, ultimately making everybody a coowner. This major change was brought about by Founder Norman Wildon, who began his transition into retirement by setting about this groundbreaking course of action just before clearing his inbox for the last time. Norman’s entrepreneurial spirit was already weaved into the very fabric of Cedesa, but this last act showed that he cared deeply about the future of his company and its employees. As Dariusz tells us, “our research told us that companies owned by EOTs experience greater sales and profits growth, as well as an increase in the number of new employees, three key determinants of future success for any business.” He continues, “EOT-owned businesses are notable not just for their increased productivity, but for significantly higher employee satisfaction rates than businesses run
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