Explore MorsaPack: MorsaPack’s key focusses & how we work

What does it mean to be a responsible business? MorsaPack’s Managing Director, Robert McEwan, talks through his views on this in this short video interview (filmed in 2020).

Looking at MorsaPack’s responsibilities to the environment, to its clients and customers, and also as an employer, Robert reflects on how these underpin his business’s offering and service.

Alternatively, you can read a full transcript of the conversation below:

Lucia France (Interviewer): Hello, I’m Lucia France and I’m here with Robert McEwan who is the Managing Director of Jemac Packaging or should I now say MorsaPack Robert?  

Robert McEwan: Well I suppose we should.  At some point we should make that change over!

Lucia France: Well the cat is out of the bag now.  You’ve given the information out there.  Can you talk to us about what you think are the key things you need to focus on for your customers this year?

Robert McEwan: Companies are going through challenging times aren’t they at the moment?

Lucia France: Of course, yeah.

Robert McEwan: It’s difficult to be in business.  The challenges of Covid and all that’s thrown at us at such short notice.  But also being responsible and I’m not saying environmentally responsible but responsible over every area of what businesses should be focusing on.  

I think the MorsaPack/Jemac view for 2021 is to consolidate what we’ve been doing for the last 50 years and make sure that customers understand the effect that that has in their business.  I think a lot of the time that we’ve been doing what we’ve been talking about and what we see as our reason for being but actually our customers may not understand the full benefits of that and how we can support them with their challenges moving forward.  

Developing our team to be able to make sure that they have the skills and the knowledge from a product and an application point of view is a big focus right at this minute in time.  So that it’s having that knowledge and developing that knowledge so that we keep up to speed with the technology changes that are happening within packaging and making sure that we are focusing that knowledge in the right way to produce the result that the customer wants to do.  One of my first questions often when I’m sat in front of a customer is ‘What do you want your packaging to do for you?’ and if you are Apple selling a £1,000 phone you want your packaging to promote the fact that somebody has spent £1,000 on a phone.  If you put that in a paper bag you’re going to be very disappointed aren’t you?

Lucia France: Absolutely.

Robert McEwan: But at the same time it’s balance and the only way you are going to get balance and I really do truly believe this, the only way you are going to get balance between what’s required environmentally and from a corporate responsibility point of view if we call it that, and performance of packaging as in that phone gets to you undamaged, is by our company having the product knowledge of how packaging products perform and how that helps your product get to where it wants to go safely.

Lucia France: Yeah, of course.  You mentioned earlier about some people not necessarily understanding where you are going with MorsaPack.  So what would you say and explain to your customers why they should buy from MorsaPack?

Robert McEwan: MorsaPack is very much, I’ve repeated it several times, MorsaPack is very different to a general packaging company.  General packaging companies are interested in ‘What product are you buying? Here’s my equivalent.’  If I think about my ideal customer it’s somebody that is wanting to go through that process of looking at the products that they’re selling, how they are currently packaged, the effects that that has on whatever they want the packaging to do and then work with us to be able to challenge that.

We have facilities to test pallet stability.  We have a, we call it an acceleration bench, which you place a pallet on and we accelerate it over 10 m and we can monitor how that product adjusts during that acceleration and it replicates or copies the effects that that pallet has in the back of the truck.  That gives us a massive amount of knowledge so that customers can see what’s happening to their product as it’s being accelerated and coming under braking.  Once we have a focus as to what that customer needs to achieve from a safety point of view it does come down to commercial aspects because being able to achieve that level of safety for the lowest cost commercially is the next step and MorsaPack covers both of those things.  A lot of people just look at the cost, how can I be cheaper for this customer?  We look at it differently, we say what is the level of safety that you need, 4% of products get to customers damaged, how can we reduce that or remove it?  What’s the level of safety that you need?  And then once we’ve got that how can we do it in the most cost-effective way.  That may not be by using the cheapest material.  It may be that we can speed up production.  

We work with a company that does edible oils and we increased their throughput by 20% by increasing the thickness of the film and reducing the number of wraps on a pallet and that’s a massive saving as far as the customer is concerned.  That’s what you get from MorsaPack that I don’t believe that you get elsewhere.

Lucia France: That’s great.  Thank you very much Robert for explaining about those key customer focuses, there’s a lot of information, thank you.