Big Bear Plastics roars forward with £2 million investment

A female industry leader, who was behind one of Harrods’ most successful marketing campaigns, is setting her sights on expansion after completing a £2 million investment drive. Big Bear Plastics’ managing director Emma Hockley is looking to maximise installation of two CNCs, a new robot and a waterjet machine to cement its position as one of the UK’s leading vacuum forming and compression moulding specialists.

She is now targeting new opportunities in point-of-sale retail and the defence sector to complement existing high-profile contracts within the agricultural, construction and leisure industries. A focus on big service, big reliability and rapid response times will be driving the growth beyond £10 million by 2027, with the new ERP system helping to optimise manufacturing processes and new product introductions.

Emma Hockley (pictured left), who marked five years at the helm this month, said: “There has been a lot of change and consolidation in the plastics sector and that represents a big opportunity for us. We’ have invested heavily in new technology and getting experienced manufacturing specialists in place and feel we have the platform and capability now to overcome some of industry’s pain points, including speed of response, material innovation and achieving world-class quality in both low and higher volumes.”

She added: “These are already delivering solutions for OEMs in automotive, agriculture and mobile home providers and we believe there are plenty of opportunities where we can deliver products to retail, as well as maximising a renewed focus on defence.”

Big Bear Plastics was founded in 1998 by Emma’ Hockley’s father Gerald Bloom, who previously launched and developed major Tier One automotive supplier Midland Industrial Plastics. Located in a 75,000ft² factory in Droitwich, the company has evolved from vacuum forming and trimming of plastic parts to offering customers access to high quality compression moulding and waterjet cutting of lightweight interior trim products.

Full service solution
The firm delivers a full-service solution from initial design, development and tooling to the manufacture of medium- to high-volume moulded parts up to 3.5m x 2.5m. It works with a wide range of thermoplastic materials, including ABS, PMMA-ABS, HDPE, HIPS, PC and PE in a variety of colours, finishes and thicknesses.

Emma, a recent inductee of the Great 100 campaign by the Made Group, concluded: “Our sales are growing steadily, and I genuinely believe we can achieve and sustain sales of £10 million-plus by 2027. We have got the capacity, we’ve got the technology, we have got the experience and we have got a strong sales pipeline, featuring exciting opportunities in new markets. As we move towards our goal, I believe we will be able to create more than 20 jobs during this time, taking our total workforce to 100 people.

“Thermoforming allies itself to multiple sectors and we’re starting to explore more of these. For instance, we are producing parts ranging from children’s play equipment to highly technical panels for vehicle modifications and aerospace applications — we are also in discussions with military and defence specialists.”

She concluded: “Manufacturing is completely different to what I was used to as Perfumery & Cosmetics Buyer at Harrods, arguably the world’s biggest and most luxury retailer. Here I came up with the Perfume Diaries, an exhibition charting the history of perfume, which generated more than £2m of press coverage and significant sales results. It’s this eye for ‘telling a story’ I want to bring into the world of industry; it will just need to focus on the benefits of vacuum forming plastics rather than high-end fragrance brands!”

Big Bear Plastics, which is accredited to ISO 9001 and is recommended for certification to the ISO 14001 environmental standard, has started work towards being part of the JOSCAR register, a collaborative online platform for the UK aerospace, defence and security sectors.