Local dignitaries attended a day of celebration to mark the centenary of Payne, the world’s leading tear tape producer.
The event on Friday, September 16, culminated in the formal Grant of Appointment of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, in the Innovation category, by the Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, Sir Andrew Buchanan Bt, KCVO.
The Queen’s Awards recognise outstanding achievement by UK businesses. Awarded annually on April 21 to coincide with Her Majesty the Queen’s birthday, candidates are judged to a demanding standard and must demonstrate the highest levels of excellence in each category.
The award was announced in April to Payne’s sister company Payne Security for its covert product authentication system. This new security technology delivers a robust and cost-effective solution to governments and industry for protecting against fraudulent and counterfeit activity, by differentiating between genuine and fake products or documents.
Sir Andrew also presented a Queen’s Award to Payne in 1993. Conferring the latest Grant of Appointment in a ceremony at Payne’s headquarters in Giltbrook, Nottinghamshire, he said: “As the representative of all the people of Nottinghamshire I want to congratulate all of you on the success of the business which has led to this award. I always scan the list eagerly to see whether an award has been made in Nottinghamshire and I was delighted to see the name Payne. It is a very great pleasure to be here today to present the Queen’s Award.”
“We are very proud to have developed an award-winning technology and we are honoured to receive the Queen’s Award,” Payne’s divisional managing director Tony Edwards responded. “It is a mark of achievement, and I know from speaking to customers and potential customers that it does make a difference, particularly overseas, and I’m confident that it will help us grow and become even more successful.”
The award was received on behalf of the company by Stephen Pinchen, divisional business development director.
A further celebration for staff was being held in the evening of September 16 in the grounds of Newstead Abbey.
Payne operates from seven countries over four continents and employs more than 250 people. It manufactures and delivers tear tape to more than 100 countries, producing enough tape each year to travel around the world’s circumference more than 700 times.
Payne’s tear tape plays a leading role in global packaging markets including tobacco, food and drink and secondary packaging, supported by an in-house design studio, technology centre and multi-million pound print facilities.
The tear tape business boasts two fully integrated plants – one at Giltbrook, the other in Richmond, USA, with additional operations in Latin America and Asia. During a visit earlier this year, the trade and industry minister Lord Green described Payne as a “genuine British success story.”
Percy Payne started the company as P.P. Payne in Nottingham in 1911, manufacturing cotton tapes for the local textile industry and during the First World War supplied the military with garment labels.
Initial premises were in Hounds Gate, Nottingham. Within a few years, additional demand meant the company had moved to larger premises in Castle Gate. In 1929, the company moved again, to land fronting Haydn Road. Payne moved to its current location in Giltbrook 30 years ago, giving another reason for anniversary celebration.
In the 1950s, Payne developed Rippatape, the first tear tape based on cotton fibres, for easy opening of boxes and sacks. Further developments include the groundbreaking Supastrip which brought the advantages of easy opening to a wide variety of packaged consumer goods such as biscuits, confectionery, tea and tobacco.
