Reece picked up the Rising Star Award at the 2021 UK Packaging Awards. Here we hear from Reece, alongside other staff from our Rawcliffe site, about his time at Cepac.

I have been working in the design department at Cepac Rawcliffe for nearly five years. I started my role as an apprentice learning the industry and gaining more and more responsibility as time went on. Starting by learning the packaging industry and packaging standards such as ‘FEFCO’ I was given a large responsibility of producing customer samples and prototypes for approval at the start of my apprenticeship. Shortly after my course came to an end I was offered a full time role as a junior designer in which I was given more and more responsibilities and started taking on customer enquiries to meet their expectations and come up with solutions to their problems. I then progressed up to my current role as a structural designer earlier this year taking on more and more enquiries and having my own input as to how the department runs.

I have worked alongside my current manager Gareth for around 3 and a half years now, and I am very happy working with him. We have a good understanding of one another, and it feels good to know your manager can trust you to do anything that he would need me to do. This is apparent as I am occasionally left to run the department on my own when Gareth is off site, on holiday or in meetings.

I have learnt a lot within my progression to my current role and feel like I can confidently do any job given to me. Starting out as an apprentice and having been given the opportunities to progress myself with various packaging and self-development courses along the way whilst also moving my way up the Design hierarchy has been very rewarding and I feel like I am an important member of the business.

—Reece Hamilton, Cepac

I have had the Pleasure of working alongside Reece now for 3.5yrs, always smiling and happy to be a part of the team.

He joined us a an Lvl2 engineering apprentice who quickly found his feet in design – completing his course and moving onto additional packaging based and in-house training.

Upon completion of his apprenticeship, he became the Junior designer – an integral part to the team. Plotting and running off samples for all our in-house projects.

Hard work and persistence saw him move up to Structural designer earlier this year. This involved him being a full-time designer working alongside myself to complete projects big and small.

With no limit to his abilities, he will no doubt find himself further up the chain in the near future, I have no problem leaving him to manage the department in my absence whether it’s for a meeting or an annual holiday.

He is level-headed and meticulous in his approach to finding robust solutions to suit our customer's needs. For someone so young his manner is professional and courteous, he’s no doubt an asset to the industry and a valuable team player here at Cepac Rawcliffe.

—Gareth Fawcett, Design Manager

After three years of training as a ‘Junior Designer’ Reece has now progressed into a full ‘Structural Designer’ roll and is even mentoring our new design technician!

Reece’s determination and enthusiasm has allowed him to push forward packaging design for our customers. He has worked diligently to reduce materials used by utilising his engineering training to produce packaging which works within the customers supply chain.

This can be demonstrated within the project he has completed for Neaco where he worked closely with the customer to ensure the packaging provided the required protection whilst using the least amount of resources. Reece’s design, using recycled papers and recyclable corrugated, helped remove not just bubble wrap, EPS and Tape but also managed to remove cost from the packaging and improve protection of the product.

—Nigel Hobson, Head of Sales and Strategy Development

Cepac won three awards at this years Packaging Awards. Keep an eye on our News page for more information.