Our roots date back to the early 1970’s when the original founder Peter Allum began his career in the printing industry.
At its inception the company was a General Printing Business supplying the likes of Letterheads, compliment slips and business cards to its customer’s.
Late 1982 saw the organization expand into the world of Business Forms otherwise known as “Continuous Stationery” this became the company’s core product running alongside the General Print Production line making the business a significant supplier to the Business Forms market, this projected the business forward into the 1990’s.
During a slow but steady decline of the Business Forms market during the 1990’s the company decided to explore the manufacture of Self-Adhesive Labels!
1994 saw the first label production equipment purchased and the very first label orders rolled off the production line…
“Our label journey had begun”
1996 was a momentous year seeing the opening of our very own purpose-built label production factory housing our Brand-new state of the art label machine, a UK first at the time with UV drying capability’s! The success of this transition into label manufacturing was now instantaneous and a heavy investment program followed. With strong sales growth each year and the business Investing in a further 4 Flexographic Printing Presses growth was strong through to 2008, this allowed for the company’s Product portfolio to be dramatically expanded.
2010 – Investment into supporting the production facility with the installation of our own in-house Studio, this allowed full independence for Proofing & Platemaking which resulted in considerable service and delivery time improvements to customers.
2012 the Directors undertook intense research into the Digital marketplace concluding that the business was ready for the Digital Revolution.
2013 Abbey committed to a partnership with the Belgium Digital Press manufacturer Xeikon which led to our first Xeikon 3300 being installed, this was followed closely by another in 2015.
Since 2016 Digital sales has grown to become a major portion of the company’s turnover, much investment has been made in the latest presses Xeikon has to offer along with ABG Digicon finishing & embellishing lines and growth in the business remains strong.
Continued Investment in flexographic printing presses has also remained especially important in recent years with most of the older equipment being replaced with the latest State-Of-the-Art Flexographic printing machines. The combination of Flexographic and Digital machinery offers our clients an un-rivelled all-round package to produce their label orders in the best and most efficient ways possible.
The company today still remains a family run business with the next generation of entrepreneurs taking over the reins. Tom Allum took up the lead role following his father’s retirement from the business. The Abbey Management team supporting Tom are fully focussed on today’s label opportunities and they in turn have a fantastic team of people in place to continue the Abbey Labels Story for many years to come.
THE END
This is not THE END just the beginning of the next chapter in the Abbey Labels Story!! …
