Seaquist Closures is a world leading manufacturer of dispensing closures to the food & beverage, personal care and household markets.

Seaquist were the pioneers of self-sealing valve technology enabling food to be stored top-down and developed the original sports cap for lightly carbonated and still beverages to prevent accidental drips, spills and leaks. Seaquist Closures employ 3,000 people in 20 plants around the world and manufacture over 10 billion closures annually. The UK site in Leeds is dedicated to the production of closures for the food, beverage and household sectors.

When Paul Glew, Financial Controller, first spoke with Neill Summerfield at the Centre for Cost and Purchase Management*, it was in the knowledge that many of the strategic spends were already handled by the Seaquist Closures Group Purchasing Team based in Germany. There remained however a number of local overhead cost areas which had not been reviewed in recent times.

Paul asked Neill Summerfield and his team to review 5 areas of expenditure and within 2 months savings had been identified in all project areas. Paul explains, “We believe that all business costs should be challenged on a regular basis and we were therefore keen to investigate our cost base in more detail. However operating a lean finance team means that we do not have the resources to carry out a forensic cost analysis of our own spending patterns and I was looking for additional resource to review and monitor this overhead expenditure.”

Neill Summerfield kept us informed of the progress of each project at every stage and demonstrated a thorough understanding of our needs checking at several stages of the process to ensure that they had captured our requirements in detail and that any solution proposed by them would meet with our acceptance.

*Expense Reduction Analysts is the global leader in cost and purchase management with operations in 30 of the world’s largest countries including the USA, China and Europe.