Sustainability

Tinmasters is a company that cares – about our products, our people and the planet. We work with metals, one of the most eco-friendly materials available, and take pains to ensure that our printing and coating processes do not have a negative impact on the environment. We are also committed to running an ethical operation (we are members of SEDEX with SMETA 4 Pillar accreditation) and promote ethical standards throughout our supply chain – by undertaking supplier audits and ensuring that the minerals we use are responsibly sourced, for example.

Working with metal

Steel and aluminium can be recycled forever with no loss of quality. Across Europe they have a superb recycling rate which continues to increase. They are the perfect answer for the circular economy, a closed material-to-material loop, sustainable and convenient.

Consumers increasingly prioritise the environment and metal ranks top for cut-through clarity.

Read more – Why choose metal packaging?

Ensuring food safety

Many of our customers are directly or indirectly involved in the food industry, so it is vitally important that we comply with all of the prevailing regulations around food contact and food safety. We take these responsibilities extremely seriously and have invested in the equipment, processes, training and management systems required to ensure we do not just meet the regulations, we exceed them.

Read more – How we manage food safety

Infant formula manufacturers are particularly demanding in this area, requiring their packaging suppliers to meet the highest possible standards of food safety. Tinmasters has been meeting and exceeding the needs of this very critical market since 1978.

Read more – Investing in food safety and ethical trading

Since 2011 we have also been supplying packaging products for Super Premium infant formula that complies with all of the GB food packaging standards that have been adopted by the China Food and Drug Administration as part of its overarching Food Safety Law.

Read more – Meeting the specific needs of the Chinese infant formula market

We rely on our highly motivated and skilled staff to ensure the ongoing success of our business in a quality-critical and compliance-driven environment. It is therefore only natural that we will do our utmost to ensure our people feel appreciated, rewarded and protected at all times.

We provide our employees with jobs that they value for the longer term and we have exceptionally low employee turnover rates to prove it. We are also fully compliant with the employment guidelines set out by the SEDEX Members Ethical Trading Association (SMETA) relating to labour standards and health and safety (as part of our wider 4 Pillar compliance).

We also look after ‘our people’ in the wider context of our community, providing direct support for local clubs and societies.

Read more – Our longstanding support for the Caldicot Male Voice Choir

We are committed to protecting the natural environment and improving our own environmental performance, which is one of the four elements comprising our 4 Pillar SMETA compliance.

Much of our work in this area focuses on reducing our energy consumption and volatile organic compound emissions.

Reducing energy consumption

We take a highly active approach to reducing our energy consumption per unit of production. In 2015, as an example, Tinmasters invested £312,000 in new dryers (for our main production units) that were 46% more energy efficient than those they replaced. Thanks to this and other initiatives taken over the past decade we have been able to reduce our energy consumption (per unit of production) by 55%.

Many of the thermally cured coatings that are used on metal packaging consisted of resins dissolved in Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) that are applied as liquids. The metal substrate is then baked at up to 300℃ so that the VOCs evaporate off, leaving the resin coating firmly applied.

In 1996, Tinmasters invested in a regenerative thermal oxidation system which dramatically reduced the volume of VOC that was released into the atmosphere. Today all of our conventional lines are equipped thermal oxidisers minimising VOC emission.

Elsewhere in the factory, we use water-based (and therefore VOC-free) compounds in our component ends and we are continuously striving to reduce further the remaining low levels of fugitive VOC emissions.

If you would like to discuss any metal printing requirements you may have, please give our experienced Tinmasters a call on +44 (0)1792 312000 or email [email protected]. We are very happy to discuss a project, provide a quote or give you details on our compliance and food safety processes.