Robinson Packaging

Robinson’s story starts in 1839, when John Bradbury Robinson, a Chesterfield chemist, bought a pill-box business and began making his own packaging. The family had already spent 200 years in local pottery businesses, so manufacturing wasn’t new; it was just the material that was.

Growth came quickly. By 1846 the company had branched into square boxes and surgical dressings, and during the Crimean War, William Robinson built the world’s first power-operated linting machine, letting Robinson produce dressings at scale. For a stretch, the company was the biggest single employer in Chesterfield, with 3,700 staff marking its centenary in 1939 with a trip to London and a concert at the Albert Hall.

Ownership stayed in the Robinson family for generations, with family members serving as chairman right through to Robert Robinson in 1978. That changed in 1988, when Tony Slipper, arriving from Cadbury-Schweppes, became the company’s first chairman from outside the family.

The business kept consolidating from there under the Robinson Packaging name, joining the AIM London Stock Market, acquiring VR Plastics in Nottinghamshire and Madrox in Warsaw, then rebranding again as Robinson Plc and expanding into Northern Europe through the acquisition of Danish business Schela Plast. The original Chesterfield spiral wound box operation was sold to Sonoco in 2011.

Today, led by CEO Dr. Helene Roberts, Robinson manufactures custom plastic and paperboard packaging, still headquartered in Chesterfield after nearly two centuries, with plants across the UK, Poland, and Denmark. It employs close to 400 people and supplies major names, including Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, SC Johnson, and Unilever, working across food and beverage, homecare, personal care and beauty, and luxury gift sectors. The company credits much of its longevity to staying small enough to move fast, arguing that agility lets it adopt new technology quicker than the far larger businesses it supplies.