Burnley manufacturer creates 15 jobs with £100k grant

A packaging manufacturer in Burnley has created 15 additional jobs with help from a government grant.

Learoyd Packaging specialises in the printing of plastic food packaging for big brands such as Warburtons, Müller Dairies and the UK’s leading supermarkets.

Learoyd identified an opportunity to grow their business by offering clients a more cost effective method of flexographic printing, which would also offer greater flexibility, shorter lead times and smaller batch sizes, all requirements for today’s retail environment.

This new methodology is based on a Fixed Colour Palette system, which allows thousands of colours to be created on press using only six standard colours.

To achieve this goal the company needed to make a major investment in new technology and to undertake significant property alterations to accommodate the new equipment.

For support, they approached Regenerate Pennine Lancashire who were able to provide a partial, non repayable grant of £100,000 supported by the government’s Regional Growth Fund for some of the machinery and the property expansion. Ray Harrison, finance director at Learoyd, said: “This project enables us to exploit new technology which not only increases our capacity but due to quicker make-ready times also means we can undertake smaller order quantities and offer our clients greater flexibility. Regenerate’s support in helping us to access the grant was invaluable and we were able to conclude this project and recruit a range of staff earlier.”