Our History
Founded in 1912, E J Melling is a global packaging supplier and one of the longest-standing packaging companies in the UK. We are engaged in all areas of retail packaging specialising in sourcing packaging products from all over the world to fulfil orders for our established customer base.
A family business with its roots in Norwegian paper-mills, the business has evolved into a cutting-edge destination for design-led packaging fulfilment.
Now in our 4th generation, we continue to stand by our founding values of outstanding personal service and the delivery of quality packaging products at competitive prices. At E J Melling we understand all aspects of the manufacturing process and as your packaging partner, we offer unrivalled client service whether the brief is a large full scale E-commerce packaging roll out or a limited run capsule collaboration project or a large ongoing rollout. Our goal is to meet your requirements and deliver beyond expectations.
Our approach of adding value to your project by continuously innovating and pushing the boundaries with materials from our extensive product portfolio, we strive to optimise your packaging to maximise how it will engage with your target audience.
With over 100 years experience we are your industry experts in creating, sourcing and delivering small to large scale packaging solutions . We are extremely proud of our broad range of customers in our portfolio from SMEs to large blue chip organisations both nationally and globally.
E J Melling is now a truly global packaging company, sourcing from our extensive network of suppliers around the world. We have successfully delivered projects to Vietnam, USA, Canada, Indonesia, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Finland and Kazakhstan. We utilise national & global shipping partners with full service storage facilities and logistic solutions for larger scale projects and ongoing packaging roll out requirements.
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Our Story
In 1912, Einar Johan Melling left his native Norway and travelled to Newcastle upon Tyne where he started a paper and board supply packaging business using his strong ties with the paper mills back home in Norway. Over the decades, the supply of paper covered greaseproof paper, tissue, kraft and sheeted cardboard from Sweden. Both wars interrupted the supply of goods but solid relationships with our Scandinavian connections and within the shipping industry, enabled E J Melling to continue trading. The supply of paper to the food industry was a core area of the business which flourished until the introduction of the supermarket which changed the landscape of food packaging forever.
A new era, and now highly contentious, of plastic food packaging emerged and by the 1970s the business had already turned its attention to a growing area of commerce within the retail sector. Department stores and the growing diversity in the high-street brought with it a huge demand for tissue paper and carrier bags from a wide range of retailers, in particular fashion stores. Recognising this change, the business adapted quickly to the trend towards paper and polythene carrier bags and emerged as highly regarded experts in this area.
The dawn and boom of E-commerce in the early 00s saw the biggest shift in packaging needs across all industries and sectors which presented an opportunity to explore corrugated and rigid board box-led packaging together with other innovations. Today the business continues to provide packaging products of outstanding quality to a host of customers – from online only retailers to traditional bricks and mortar stores. E J Melling’s consistent ability to evolve within the constantly changing packaging landscape is key to our longevity. With our reputation for personal service, attention to detail and delivering product on time, our client base continues to grow. Our experience keeps us ahead of the game and our portfolio of clients includes a diverse range of independent retailers, household names and global super-brands.
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Process
At E J Melling we are passionate about packaging and converting your concepts to reality. We understand how packaging can enhance your product and we work together with brands and businesses to achieve their visions. We approach every brief with the same attention to detail and strive to deliver outstanding customer care throughout each project.
Our areas of expertise include E-commerce corrugated boxes and rigid box production, polythene, duffle and luxury paper carrier bags, printed tissue paper, mailing bags and labels. We have extensive experience in retail packaging, event packaging and also within the food and drink sector. Through continuously evolving we have become extremely well versed in bespoke collaboration packaging using more complex materials such as wood, PET, rigid board, perspex and marble.
Our in-house design partners can provide a range of services, from concept creation to artwork and technical drawings. Depending on scale of project and an order commitment we can sample your packaging vision free of charge; depending on source we can have samples to you within one week. Large quantities of samples of current and past clients projects are available in our archives to aid you with your vision.
Our customers can rest in the knowledge that we have built up relationships with all our factories for decades. Globally these factories are the very best at what they do which eradicates the risk of quality issues. We constantly have containers on commercial vessels and these economies of scale assist with our SME customer base, enabling smaller orders to be shipped in a container rather than as LCL where damage can occur.
Our access to the best factories in the Far East is highly beneficial for larger scale operations seeking cost reductions and economies of scale. Similarly SME’s with an initial small order can benefit when their quantities increase, so that when they grow, we grow.
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Company ethics
As part of our responsible sourcing policy, E J Melling suppliers are all ethically and technically audited to comply with industry standards and modern slavery guidelines. Our commitment to the environment has seen an increase in paper, board and corrugated products instead of polythene. We offer various Degradable and Biodegradable polythene solutions to our customers all of which are 100% recyclable.
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Manufacturing
At E J Melling we have an in depth understanding of the printing process, and know the print limitations of the various materials. We are therefore able to tailor bespoke solutions for your packaging concept.
Over the years we have visited many factories all over the world, not only for production familiarisation but together with customers for pass on press approvals. This experience continuously expands our knowledge of the printing and manufacturing of packaging. We have to ensure that our factories have invested in the latest printing equipment so that we can offer our customers the very best quality and keep E J Melling ahead of the competition.
The majority of our packaging is produced on fully automated machinery as well as semi-automated (hand fed) for our corrugated E-commerce supply side. On the bespoke side, our luxury footwear collaboration boxes and wooden display boxes are principally machine manufactured but the print and die cutting are finished by hand. Our polythene carrier bags and machine made paper carrier bags are flexographically printed. This requires printing on to a reel first, the handles are then added and then the material is cut to size. Tissue paper is printed in the same way. Lithographic and screen printing are extremely effective print methods for clarity or registration of logo artwork on paper and fabric.
We are also familiar with advanced techniques such as logo sand blasting and machine engraving on more complex materials and have utilised all these techniques on recent products.
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Logistics
The majority of our customers packaging products are shipped from the principal Chinese ports to Port of Tyne in the North East of England. Find our more about our cargo handling on our logistics page.
