A Northumberland business specialising in the supply of state of the art food packaging machines is celebrating after one of Europe’s leading manufacturers granted them exclusive UK distribution rights.
Blyth based GSP (UK) Ltd is now the UK and Ireland suppliers of Italian-made flowrappers and automatic wrapping systems for food and non-food items. The business was originally started as “It’s a Wrap” in 2002 by ex Royal Navy engineer Kevin Donnelly from Ellington who utilised his engineering background to service and install second hand wrapping machines for the food trade. Building up a reputation for quality and dependability, Kevin took the decision to invest financially in his own future by supplying brand new machines for the food processing industry.
“I’d bring second hand machines into the workshop, strip them down, modify and rebuild them to meet the customer’s needs,” said Kevin.” The machines would leave me as good as new and my reputation reached General System Packaging in Schio in Italy. They liked what I was doing and approached me to supply their new machines. I’m delighted to be their sole UK distributor. It’s a great accolade for us and the business is really moving ahead.”
Indeed, GSP now has a growing clientele of customers ranging from large Blue Chip Companies to small owner operator businesses such as bakeries and biscuit manufacturers. The wrapping machines can handle a wealth of applications from pork pies to cabbages, biscuits to cakes and bread to energy food bars. Each machine is capable of wrapping hundreds of items per minute without any human intervention ensuring that strict hygiene standards are maintained within the food processing area.
Kevin’s latest machines have just been installed in a food processing plant in North Yorkshire where up to 500 pork pies a minute are efficiently wrapped before being distributed to shops and supermarkets all over the country.
Kevin believes that his northern location has given him a major advantage for the servicing and maintenance side of his business as most of his competitors are located south of the M62.
“I’ve travelled the world with the Royal Navy so I’m more than happy to visit customers all over the UK,” he said. “To spread the load as the business keeps growing, I’ll be looking to take on more staff very soon. Our new staff will help with maintenance contracts, supply and fix spare parts and carry out flow wrap & packaging machine operator training for our new customer’s employees. It’s an exciting time for us and our clients and it’s a great feeling to see products on the supermarket shelves that have been professionally flow wrapped by a GSP machine.”
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Photo Shows Kevin with a machine processing biscuits and muffins