Packaging You Can Trust
Rowlinson Packaging is a leading designer and manufacturer of bespoke and standard timber packaging. We are a family-owned business who have been experts in timber packaging since 1966. With over 50 years’ experience across two sites covering over 30 acres. Whatever you require, we will design, manufacture and deliver an ideal solution at a competitive price.
We provide services to some of the UK and Europe’s largest manufacturing exporters, with a workforce of 200 employees and our own fleet of new, low-emission vehicles. We are also able to hold product in stock for up to three months, providing a stock-and-serve service.
Also available are consignment stock, JIT and KANBAN supply solutions to suit your business needs. Our sites are situated in the North and South of the country, providing premium packaging solutions across the whole of the UK.
Our reputation for product development, high service levels and excellent value for money is second to none and our main product lines include:
– Wooden packing cases
– Wooden packing crates
– Wooden pallets
A brief history
James Rowlinson left school at the age of twelve and started work sweeping up for a timber merchant. Progressing through the ranks to become a timber salesman. Ultimately, he decided to work for himself and started a small family business in the 1920s, as a brass plate sales agent buying and selling timber. Soon afterwards land was purchased alongside the Manchester Ship Canal on Trafford Park Industrial Estate and in 1926 James Rowlinson & Sons was created.
At the time the British Empire was an area for the export of capital goods, e.g., steam trains, cars, and large consumer goods. So apart from timber for housing, with conventional freight, everything exported had to go in crates or packing cases. The site at Trafford Park, already a sawmill and timber yard, started to manufacture timber crates and packing cases for exported goods. Through the decades the company expanded, importing timber from around the world and selling everything from timber carcassing for construction, to the finest veneers for high end motor vehicles. Whilst increasing its manufacturing portfolio to included prefab housing panels, wirebound containers, agricultural buildings, roof trusses, pallets, shuttering and much more.
The growth of the company saw a rise in the number of its sites across the UK and Europe. In the 1960s a twenty plus acres site on an ex-RAF aerodrome at Wardle in Cheshire was acquired. Today, the Wardle site is home to the head office of the Rowlinson Group and the key manufacturing site for Rowlinson Packaging.
