The UK injection moulding industry employs nearly 200,000 people and generates millions of pounds for the domestic economy yet all the general public seem to read or hear about the industry is about plastic bags and the damage caused to the environment by waste plastic. Kavia is equally concerned with these issues but this author has a view on the supermarket bags that they created the issue and then created the environmental scare to actually reduce their running costs (and sold you the bag for life with additional profit).
Fortunately the benefit is a change of consumer behaviour to reuse bags and the planet is benefitting. Much of the environmental damage is caused by the consumers so everybody can play a part in controlling how we discard our rubbish and reuse.
Kavia Moulded Products firmly believe and encourage our customers to use or increase recycled content into the injection moulded components and recently introduced a new product of our own BLMB Kit for rowing and sculling product that uses 100% recycled material.
Companies are pushing tonnes of plastic into the UK (in most cases bringing environmental gains, for example cars are 18% lighter because of plastic reducing carbon emissions) that can be reused making a further environmental impact as well saving money on importing virgin material if the new design makes consideration for the recycled material.
Good products need good design, Philipe Starck has been quoted to say Britain is not producing good designers but our experience at Kavia is we are working with a lot of good designers that are creating their companies or name as a brand and taking the product straight to the consumer. This cuts out a lot of middle men and gives the consumer a cheaper more environmentally friendly product, the challenges to UK manufacturing and Kavia is now we are tasked with completing a whole product and in some instances shipping direct to end users. This makes for a very lean manufacturing process saving road miles and warehousing but also offers greater profit margins as there are less people taking a slice of the pie so to speak.
The UK is still a great source of new ideas with over 50% of the world’s inventions coming from this little island. So designers and inventors taking the leaner manufacturing model described above should collaborate with Kavia as we have extensive experience in getting your idea to market with design resources, in-house toolmaking, injection moulding production, assembly services and distribution models. Have a look at our case studies page for the types of projects we have been working on.
Coupled with UK manufacturing being forced to be a lot more efficient whilst they have been competing with offshore manufacturing it’s a great time launch a new product with the benefits of close contact and communication. Recently, some of Kavia’s current and prospective customers are having a lot of issues with offshore manufacturing rising costs to the extent it moving back to the UK and Kavia is working on a number of these tool transfer and new product projects.
Please contact us with your tool transfer or new project enquiry.
