The site - which allows users to shop online and submit artwork up to 100mb for proofing by Meridian's design team - provides detailed information on the wide range of products and services offered by Meridian.

Meridian's Managing Director, Rob Schooling sees the move as a positive step forward in increasing Meridian's visibility within the marketplace:

"It's a fact that even some of our longest standing customers simply aren't aware that we can supply them with a much wider range of products than we currently do. For instance, we have supplied some customers with transparent packaging for over 15 years and they are only recently realising that we can also meet all of their printed carton requirements. The online shopping functionality also helps to make the ordering process easier than ever for our customers and underlines our commitment to growth through the wholesale side of the business."

The website also aims to de-mystify the overall area of food packaging compliance, which is an area that suppliers and chocolatiers have found difficult to master and which requires excellent communication up and down the supply chain.

Meridian's Operations Manager, Adam Heath commented: "Improving communication between Meridian and our suppliers and indeed us and our customers has been one of the key goals of the past 18 months. It was clear that we needed to take the lead in providing better guidance on meeting legislative requirements for supplying safe and legal products, and that we had to do this by adopting what the FSA were recommending as "good practice" but ensuring that this was legible and easy to interpret for the recipient. We feel that we've achieved this and the website now also provides a great starting place for customers when they are searching for helpful online resources discussing just these issues."

If you would like more information on the web project or any any of the issues raised in this release please contact:

Adam Heath
info@meridiansp.co.uk
01684 578441

We've known about winning the award since July but weren't allowed to announce it until after the award ceremony which was held yesterday at the PPMA show at the NEC in Brimingham. Sadly due to unavailibility noone from Meridian could attend the ceremony - a shame but possibly saving a hangover today!

Due to the growth of our very successful stock confectionery packaging range, many of our customers know us only as a wholesaler, so its good to put ourselves on the map as a high quality manufacturer as well; particularly as we worked hard and made signficant investments to achieve our certification to BRC/IoP standards as a manufacturer not just as a stockist.

The award was for the work on the Speciality Farm Foods range launch, which we designed alongside our customer's selected design agency (Kameleon Brand Design). One of the major challenges was achieving the balance between achieving the desired whiteness combined with the rustic finish of the solid printed areas and the crisp clarity of text required for the 'story' associated with each product variant. We also had fun with the emboss which had to be perfectly in register on the printed filligree and required a careful balance between costing the job efficiently through running multi-up and achieving consistent quality and keeping set-up times realistic. We were happy not just with the finsihed product but with the way the project ran as a whole.

It also sees us achieve the dizzying heights of a 100% record as this represents the first time we've entered the awards! We hope there will be plenty more to come...

Adam.