Pets at Home are the UK’s leading pet specialist, providing pet owners with all their product needs, they also have Vets4Pets practices and Groom Room salons and a familiar brand to many.
Pets at Home started out in 1991 as a wholesaler with a team of just 15 and have worked hard to improve and grow every day.
By putting pets before profit, working as a team and taking pride in everything they do, they’ve grown into a 451 store network with more than 8,913 colleagues working in their stores, Groom Rooms, Distribution Centres and Support Office.
Keen to ensure Pets at Home is an enjoyable, exciting place to work, they're always striving to work with pride and passion, in a fun and fearless way, developing and rewarding colleagues with an extensive in-house series of training programmes, wellbeing initiatives and a comprehensive benefits package and in 2018 were voted top 5 in the Great Place to Work UK’s Large category.
Following a recommendation by an existing Packaging Automation customer, Pets at Home approached Packaging Automation in 2022 to support them with an onsite packaging materials review as they tried to determine the best materials not only for their pets but also their products and the planet too. With a focus on becoming carbon neutral, it was important for the Pets at Home team to fully understand not only what is recyclable or indeed compostable but also what carbon efficiencies can be achieved with each material including plastic.
When it comes to packaging materials our in house expert, Simon Wilson, who runs the Trial Facility at Packaging Automation was happy to help and share his expertise and enlisted the support of Dave Lefevre at D&M Packaging, an independently owned UK supplier of flexible packaging materials.
The team at Packaging Automation put together a 1-day bespoke training session for Pets at Home to help them understand how we test the different materials, what questions to ask their suppliers and the impact of using different materials on cost, efficiency, production speeds and outputs.
During the course of the day, they discovered the variety of packaging materials available and learnt how to test the seal so that they could ensure they were selecting the best option to achieve maximum shelf life. This engaging and interactive session took place on site at Packaging Automation with time spent in the Trial Facility testing the quality of the seal and the peel using the onsite burst test tank.
Toni-Anne Harrison (Head of Technical, Quality and Product Process), Pets at Home, commented: “thanks so much to Packaging Automation for such an informative day, which was delivered with true expertise and also having the pilot plant to support the practical delivery of concepts was invaluable. I brought a team with a diverse set of deliverables, and the course managed to cover both the concept and process delivery aspects, and will undoubtedly be of real benefit to us when dealing with our manufacturing partners”
The Packaging Automation Trial Facility is available to test material compatibility and / or seal strengths, trial gas flushing for extra shelf life and to trial new tray or film concepts as well as contamination trials. To find out more contact:
