James Cropper accelerates sustainable growth plans

Technical Fibre Products’ (TFP, Burneside, U.K.) parent company James Cropper (Cumbria, U.K.), offering advanced materials, luxury packaging and paper products, has announced a strategy to accelerate growth across the group.

Since the appointment of Steve Adams as CEO in August 2022, the company has reported significant progress in repositioning James Cropper to capitalize on growth opportunities — the need for novel and high-performance materials, sustainable fibers and low to zero-carbon processing — within its core and emerging end markets.

Three strategic changes will position James Cropper for accelerated growth:

• Brand profile: reorganization and renaming;
• A step change of investment in innovation and systems;
• Streamlining its paper division to improve productivity and margins.

The James Cropper brand will be reorganized into three separate divisions
(James Cropper Paper, Technical Fibre Products and Colourform) into four market-facing segments, unified under the group name:

• James Cropper Creative Papers: The company’s historic business supplying specialist paper markets with a range of colored and embossed papers, and sustainable fiber options including CupCycling.
• James Cropper Luxury Packaging: Incorporates James Cropper’s multi-award winning Colourform molded pulp innovation and the packaging papers made for leading luxury brands.
• James Cropper Technical Fibres: Targeting core technical fiber markets including aerospace, defense, construction and industrial.
• James Cropper Future Energy: Incorporating TFP Hydrogen, and includes materials and products for fuel cells, carbon capture, batteries and wind.

These segments will be managed under two managing directors covering paper products and advanced materials, respectively.

The new brand strategy will leverage the brand value of the James Cropper name across a variety of markets and geographies, and generate a more focused operation and streamlined cost base with greater collaboration
and sharing of functions across the group. The reorganization and renaming will be delivered within the remainder of 2023.

“Our strategic realignment will drive margin improvements by bringing greater focus on our customers and allow us to take better advantage of our size.”

Greater synergies across the group will be supported by a multi-million pound investment in the next three years that will simplify processes and systems and combine group functions. In turn this will reportedly enable smarter access to data and inform leaner working practices for more efficient operations.

To drive future growth through innovation, the board has made a senior level appointment with the move of Patrick Willink to chief innovation officer, starting immediately. Willink will lead a Centre for Innovation at James Cropper, bringing a wealth of experience to this role, as former paper operations director, group CTO and most recently, managing director of the Colourform luxury packaging division.

The Innovation team will be scaled up to play a critical part in ensuring James Cropper will meet the anticipated demands of future markets and customers, whether technical, environmental or economic, to drive costs down and volumes up. Activities will include: delivering plans to
decarbonize the group’s operations; making ever greater use of recovered fibers; and helping to create technology roadmaps in emerging markets such as green hydrogen, fuel cells and carbon capture.

Another key element of the group’s strategy will be significant changes to the paper division. In order to create a more resilient and higher margin business that is less exposed to the multiple headwinds it has faced for many years, the group is proposing to reduce the number of paper machines in operation from four to three, with two machines anticipated to be in production at any one time.

Ultimately this reorganization and streamlining will lead to a change in overall headcount, and accordingly the company has submitted an advance notification of redundancies, with a 90-day consultation period
commencing with immediate effect. Overall, approximately 10% of employees will potentially be affected, predominantly within the paper and group functions.

“We’re a purpose-driven business built on strong values and announcing potential job loses is not a decision taken lightly,” James Cropper CEO Steve Adams says. “We will work collaboratively with our employees, unions and representatives throughout this process. Change is difficult yet it is essential to ensure the sustainability and growth of James Cropper.”

“Our strategic realignment will drive margin improvements by bringing greater focus on our customers and allow us to take better advantage of our size and remain agile and dynamic in our markets,” Adams adds. “Combined with our wealth of manufacturing knowledge, sustainability alternatives and pioneering abilities, we will strengthen our position across multiple sectors as the preferred global partner of choice.”