News

An historic family business in North Yorkshire has been able to successfully fulfill lucrative orders in Asia after help and customised training from Chamber International.

Label specialists and printers, Sessions of York received a £500,000 order from Bangladesh for two machines to apply labels to pharmaceutical products. Previously, the 200 year old company, with a long track record of worldwide sales, had relied on customers to arrange shipping for machines sold abroad. But this time there was a major hurdle. “In Bangladesh it’s illegal for companies to pay for anything before they actually get it,” explains Peter Haw, (pictured) manager of the company’s machine division. “But we didn’t want to send a half million pound order without money in our pocket.”

“We were in a maze because it was the first time we’d come across this. So we approached Chamber International and they were extremely helpful.”

Sessions discovered there was a solution to the problem using an irrevocable letter of credit in which the customer lodges a “ring-fenced” payment with a bank, which the firm would receive when it produced a bill of lading to show the equipment had been despatched. However, the necessary paperwork proved highly complex.

“This documentation has to be very carefully adhered to,” adds Mr Haw. “So Chamber International vetted everything before shipping. It was a real help at a time when we were worried.”

In order to make sure that future orders to Bangladesh went smoothly, Sessions commissioned specialist in-house training for its staff from two of Chamber International’s documentation experts.

As well as printing and producing bespoke labelling machines, for more than 70 years Sessions has been at the forefront of pioneering new types of self-adhesive labels and was the first UK company to produce them under licence in 1939. It remains at the forefront of new technology. State-of-the-art products such as radiation- and temperature-sensitive, tamper-proof, security and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) labels account for 80 per cent of its annual £6 million sales.

“In our game we have to look at being different and do the things others can’t,” says Mr Haw. “Three people in a shed can produce labels but we have to produce clever labels such as those which change colour.”

Maintaining its innovative edge and promoting is green credentials, Sessions is to launch the first “liner-less” labels without paper backing along with special machines to apply them at the Total Packaging Exhibition at the NEC in May.

The firm was started in 1811 by the Sessions family which has a long Quaker tradition. The present chairman and managing director William Mark Sessions is the fifth generation of his family to run the business.

Telephone Joe Baker on 0845 034 7200 to find out more about Chamber International's bespoke training priced from as little as £350 per day and remember to ask about funding which could reduce the cost to less than £150