“People think it’s a terrible thing, but it can be the solution to so many problems and in most cases it’s 100% recyclable,” he says. “For example, we’ve been working on a bio-polymer that can be put in the compost bin for about three years, and we’re 95% there.
“Environmental friendliness is the way forward and everything that drives us.”
Bloom is a family-run business that develops, manufactures and sells both its own inventions and general products, including floral packaging, safety thorn systems, pegs, and a variety of shovels and measures.
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David Reardon
David ReardonThe company is run by David and his children Tom, who studied robotics at Liverpool University, and Hannah, who studied web design and computer science at Edge Hill.
“My father started his own company in the plastics industry in 1965 – he worked in the industry all his life, so he built up a wealth of knowledge – and I started here around 20 years ago,” says David, 56. “It is a real family business and i love that legacy.
“Everyone does everything: my daughter adjusts machines and takes care of the web design, my son works with robots and does the dishes – we all do a lot,” he adds. “It’s very fulfilling.
“We didn’t set out with a fixed vision of running a family business, it just grew organically.”
Hannah Reardon
Bloom has come a long way over the past 18 months, adopting cutting edge technology to help companies improve productivity and growth, drive development, and drive green innovation with the help of Made Smarter, a national industrial digitization movement. Put Britain at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution ”.
“We’re very energy conscious internally,” explains David, who, along with Bloom, is one of 3,000 small businesses in the Northwest supported by Made Smarter. “We use internally recycled materials, we’ve been using energy-efficient machines for 20 years, and even then I financed the whole place with carbon trust loans to offset our CO2 emissions.
“Hannah and Tom are also very strong on the green side of things,” he adds, with new state-of-the-art robotics and process control technology that is helping to increase productivity by 25%. “We have always used and trained in cutting-edge technology, which means we can be quite inventive.
“Made Smarter has accelerated our ambitions by years.”
Tom Reardon
Bloom, which employs four people, has also invested in energy efficient machinery and 3D printing to manufacture everything in-house while developing food-safe and 100% recyclable polypropylene.
At the end of the day, Bloom has to design and manufacture products with more than just one life and do something about the negative reputation of plastics.
“The key to technology adoption is making everyone feel needed, not replaced,” says David, who is from Liverpool. “Using technology is not about cutting jobs, it is about becoming more profitable and moving people to other areas that will better serve the company and remove the mundane from tasks to find more fulfilling roles.
“It’s a smarter approach to manufacturing.”
David says that using the latest technology, the company was well positioned to handle the various bans imposed by Covid-19 and the general unpredictability of the past 12 months.
“I think we’ve never been as busy as we were at this last lockdown,” he says. “We were very lucky during the Covid phase due to the level of automation we have. We never had to close the door. “
