Campaign to fill job vacancies at large Wellington employer

A RECRUITMENT campaign by one of Wellington’s major employers has been launched.

VPK Packaging Ltd, which operates from the former Co-op regional distribution centre on the Chelston Business Park, has leafletted door to door in Wellington to advertise job vacancies.

The leaflets, delivered by Royal Mail, announced to residents ‘We are hiring’ and said the company could offer ‘immediate starts’ for production and warehouse operators, fork lift truck drivers, and shift engineers.

The firm, previously known as Rigid Containers Ltd, also said it was looking for two mechanical/electrical apprentice engineers to start in the summer of this year.

Belgium-headquartered VPK was established in 1935 and is a leading international supplier of sustainable packaging solutions, producing corrugated board, solid board, and tubes and corner protectors.

It has more than 6,400 employees in 70 plants across 20 countries, including two others in the UK and four in Ireland, and a turnover of £1.55 billion in 2021, 28 per cent up on the previous year, producing a net operating profit of £77.7 million.

The Wellington site has seen a £75 million investment in a warehouse extension and state of the art machinery.

In its recruitment literature the company said: “We are a strong believer in promoting our employees internally where possible and have many employees in management roles who have progressed internally in those roles.”

The company said 2023 ‘is going to be a busy and exciting year’ which was why it was looking for ‘talented individuals’ to join VPK and ‘play a crucial role in the success at Wellington’.

It said the Wellington site was continuing to expand and was a ‘growing part of our state of the art portfolio of corrugated packaging manufacturing facilities’.

The Wellington Weekly has asked VPK to comment about the recruitment campaign.