Big Bear Is Celebrating Its 25th Anniversary!

Big Bear Plastic Products, the privately owned British thermoforming company from Worcestershire, are thrilled to have reached their 25th anniversary in 2023. In celebrating their 25th birthday, Big Bear was delighted to be joined by Nigel Huddleston MP, Member of Parliament for Mid Worcestershire and Minister of State in the Department for Business and Trade. Mr Huddleston addressed the entire Big Bear team, commending everybody for achieving the major milestone of 25 years, noting that this was no mean feat for a manufacturing company in these uncertain times. He also acknowledged Big Bear’s status as an important local employer, particularly as recent growth has seen the workforce double in size.

Celebrating 25 years in business was a good opportunity to recognise Big Bear’s longest-serving employees, and beautiful certificates and gifts were awarded to those who had served the company for 15 years or more, including Dave Colley, who’s 25 years of service merited a special prize! The certificates were presented by Gerald Bloom, founder and owner of Big Bear, who was himself recently recognized in the “75 at 75” Interplas Awards for his contribution to the plastics industry.

Gerald and his daughter, Emma Hockley, Big Bear’s Managing Director, then cut a suitably enormous cake which had been specially created for the occasion with the “Big Bear 25 Years” logo. Emma said:

“Achieving a key milestone such as this is a time for reflection on how much progress has been made, despite the many challenges along the way, and we have certainly had our fair share of those! More importantly though, it is a time to look to the future, so it’s fitting that on the same day as the anniversary celebrations, we took delivery of a brand-new CNC machine.”

Over the last few months, Big Bear have steadily been upgrading and replacing its machine fleet, and to date have added a new waterjet, a large cutting robot and 2 new CNC machines. A £3m investment programme over the next 4 years will see a completely new fleet by 2027.

With a new Senior Leadership Team well-established, a strong investment plan and some exciting new development projects in the pipeline, Big Bear is looking forward to the next 25!