Our Sponsors - Dalepak Ltd

When Mick White a Northampton based businessman began a small packaging concern with his wife Sheila in 1991, he would have laughed at any suggestion that 12 years down the line, his company would be employing over 80 people across two Northampton sites with well over 120,000ft² at their disposal, while servicing some of the country’s biggest and best-known blue chip companies such as The Ford Motor Company, Stanley Tools, One For All (UK) Ltd, Woolworth’s, Dixons and Currys, Argos and Index to name but a few.

Now though, we do a great deal more than just contract packing and have expanded beyond specialists in that field, to include Freight Forwarding, HM Customs Bonded Warehousing, Distribution Worldwide, Client Customer Care, Client Sales Administration, Product Quality Control, Field Marketing and In-Store Merchandising and selling clients products on the Internet and advising our clients on as consultants. We even manufacture shower gel / bubble bath!

So what’s in a name?

Well, quite simply everything where Dalepak is concerned. In a golden hour, the company took its title from Mick and Sheila’s first grandson Dale, and hasn’t looked back since. “The whole process has been an extraordinary one of growth.” Explains Mick: “We had been in business before, in engineering and sheet metal fabrication but this was a new area to us. I remember Sheila coming back from town one day and saying we ought to go into packaging… putting things in boxes. We looked into it and felt there was a market to explore. We started the business in March 1991. Our grandson Dale had been born in December 1989 and this had quite literally changed our lives so it was natural to call the firm Dalepak”.

We managed to pick up a contract from a London based company from a girl who lived in Northampton and we started up in 2,600ft² at Southbridge, Northampton. From Southbridge, Dalepak’s rapid expansion saw them move to larger premises. We now have two sites, owning 30,000ft² at Ross Road, St James in the town (with another 30,000ft² rented as general warehousing) while renting another 64,000ft² on Caswell Road in Brackmills now our Head Office.

Our biggest break arrived four years ago with a phone call out of the blue from Ford’s at Daventry, who quite simply plucked Dalepak out of Yellow Pages.
“Everyone needs a decent break in life and quite simply, this was ours,” admitted Mick.
We gave them a presentation of what we could do and they were impressed enough to give us a six months trial contract. We must have done something right as years later we have picked up on-going contracts, which involved hand packaging of cables and light bulbs, in fact anything you associate with a car.

From this, we have picked up more work from within the motor industry. Around 20 per cent of our business is connected to the motor industry and this is expected to grow.

One of the most recent areas of development has been In-store merchandising through the company’s Field Marketing Division (DFM). One example is that DFM is the leading merchandisers in Toys-R-Us representing many house hold names laying out displays, demonstrating products, and ordering stock for our warehouse to distribute to 64 national stores.

The company’s stability is now cemented around Mick White and his three fellow directors, son Gary, Mickey Finn and Andy Redondo who all started work for the company in 1993 before buying into the firm 12 months later. Equally as important is the progressive management team geared to developing Dalepak’s future in the most professional manner.

Taking Quality Seriously

Dalepak is in possession of not one, but three certificates of Registration for Quality Management, Environmental Management and Occupational Health and Safety Management. At the time of the presentation by Tom Harland – Global Key Account Manager of the British Standards Institution, it was recognised that Dalepak was one of the few companies in the logistics industry worldwide, which held all 3 standards.

Dalepak’s relationship with its workforce was highlighted, in December 2002, by the award of the “Investors in People” standard to Dalepak Field Marketing (DFM). It is hoped to extend this award across the whole company in the near future.

These certificates will give out customer confidence and shows we operate in a controlled manner.

Along way from humble beginnings, but still the business rolls on, can you afford to miss out!