Quadpack was established in 2003 through the merger of Belcos Packaging (Spain), Lenglart Packaging (France) and Gadbrook Packaging (UK). Now in its 20th year, Quadpack is a company with a story to tell. It started with Tim Eaves, Philippe Lenglart and Jeremy Garrard: three packaging mavericks who came together with a single mission – to help beauty brands perform.

Tim Eaves: “I was the owner of Belcos, a packaging trading company based in Barcelona. In 2002, I was in Hong Kong at a trade fair with Jeremy Garrard, the owner of Gadbrook packaging in the UK. I said to him: We are doing the same thing but based in different countries. So wouldn’t it be great if we started collaborating? Oh and by the way, I have a great friend in France, Philippe Lenglart, who is also bringing products over from Asia. So a couple of weeks later, we all flew to Stansted Airport and there we decided to create Quadpack as a type of umbrella company, while we all retained our separate businesses.”

Philippe Lenglart: “We used Quadpack as a name for marketing, exhibitions and partners. And then we decided to create our own purchasing office in China to help coordinate supply and other activities.”

Jeremy Garrard: “Back then there was no internet, I mean there was, but there were no big online shops like Alibaba. There were hardly any European cosmetics companies travelling to China to source their packaging, so we did that for them. We bought, we sold back and we created value for our clients, our manufacturing partners and ourselves. Sounds straightforward, right? But we were ambitious, and we were brave.”

Philippe Lenglart: “Everything was so different, the food, the hotels, the way of working. On our first trip to China, we visited a few factories together and that was a big awakening.”

Tim Eaves: “So a year later, in 2003, we were all together in Shanghai. And a debate started on a bus if we should drop our company names and change them to Quadpack Spain, Quadpack UK and Quadpack France respectively. I was absolutely against the idea. Belcos was already a strong brand, but Jeremy and Philippe convinced me. So Quadpack was born out of collaboration – a term that is used a lot these days when talking about a fairer way of doing business. But we were practising this 20 years ago, not just with each other, but suppliers and clients, as well. We invested so much in building mutually beneficial relationships.”