Established for over 35 years, Bradman Lake Group designs, engineers, manufactures and supplies a broad portfolio of automated packaging equipment, from flowwrappers, feeding and distribution and storage equipment to high speed cartoners, tray erectors and case packers, film, stretch and shrinkwrapping lines.
Earlier this year the Group established a new headquarters and Centre of Excellence in Norwich, a stone’s throw from its former site in the city, simultaneously (Packaging Today – September ’07) unveiling plans to launch a raft of new machines over the next three years in a drive to treble turnover to £110m by 2010. The Group’s machines are sold worldwide under the Bradman Lake, Autowrappers and Europack brands, many to leading brand owners.
With additional sites in Germany and the US, the Group has established a growing reputation for specialist engineering expertise, placing increasing recent focus on complementary vision systems and incorporating sophisticated robotics into its lines.
Langley Holdings describes itself as a “globally operating, multi-disciplined engineering concern providing capital equipment technologies and services to diverse markets around the world”. It comprises four main divisions based principally in the UK, Germany and France, supported by worldwide subsidiaries in Europe, the Americas, Australasia and the Far East.
While Langley has broad-based engineering interests – for instance it claims to have supplied “vital components’ for every Airbus aircraft in service today, as well as back-up power for airport landing, runway lighting and air traffic control facilities – its acquisition of Bradman Lake represents its first major foray into packaging machinery for the FMCG sector.
Langley has “grown considerably” since the late 1990s, “from primarily a UK engineering business” into a “globally operating concern”, via acquisitions in Germany, France and the UK. Employing some 2,500 personnel globally, it has a current turnover of some €0.5bn.
