The Plastics Industry Mourns Stephen Ellis

We regret to inform you of the passing of Stephen Ellis, he was a well know individual within the plastics industry who will be sadly missed.

After leaving school in 1952, Stephen went to work at Cadbury’s in their Bournville factory. From the shop floor he worked in the Chemists Dept whilst awaiting an opportunity to join the sales team. In 1954 he had the mandatory obligation to National Service, finding himself in the Army.

At 20, in 1956, he continued with Cadbury until an Uncle pointed out to him that one of his suppliers was looking for an effective salesman - would he be interested ? The Company was Hawkins Paper & Plastics (Birmingham ). He joined them in 1967 and became Sales Manager.

Steve dealt with a number of customers, some of which he brought to the business and Hawkins grew rapidly. His ambition to achieve a board appointment was barred to him, so he thought that he would ‘do it himself’. Hawkins agreed that if he left the business, he could take the customers he had brought to their business.

This was to become the base of his business he named Viking Packaging. He rented a 5,000 sq ft factory in Sutton Coldfield in 1969, essentially making wicketed bags for ICI fibres in Gloucester + numerous other customers.

It was clear that the burgeoning packaging industry required a larger factory, so Steve started to look further afield to the south of Birmingham to the satalite town of Droitwich. There he purchased several acres of land on the Industrial Estate & built a complex including an office block of approx 20,000 sq ft. The year was 1973. 

Viking purchase a second hand four colour stack press. This was soon followed by extruders of polythene.

 It was between 1971 to 1973 that the bakery industry decided to change the wrapping materials from waxed paper to polythene bags. Viking were at the very start of this era together with BXL. The market for bread bags was 50 million per week. This became the basis of the Viking success story.

Viking purchased 22 acres of land in Ledbury and build factories for the conversion of printed polythene, extruded & printed in Droitwich.

Sir John Harvey Jones ( recently retired chairman if ICI ) was asked to ‘open’ the Viking Ledbury factory. Over lunch one of Steve’s colleagues asked Sir John ‘"Do you have any problems with your colleagues because you are surrounded by many Phd’s and you don’t have a degree ?" He replied "NO but I think they have".

In 1988, with the help of Steve, Viking went public.

Viking had several owners soon after going public - Bowaters, & finally Amcor, making Stephen a true pioneer. RIP.