One of South Cumbria's biggest manufacturers has a new website thanks to a collaboration between local businesses.

Agencies Plain Creative and A Digital, based in Kendal, teamed up as part of a joint pitch to design and build a new corporate website for James Cropper PLC in Burneside.

They were given the brief to tell "a simple, customer centred and cohesive story" uniting James Cropper’s three areas of business – producing speciality papers, Colourform moulded paper packaging and Technical Fibre Products' highly specialised materials.

The business also wanted a platform to talk about its projects and partnerships, such as the CupCycling partnership with British coffee shop chain, Costa Coffee. This is the world’s first recycling process that saves take-away cups from landfill and turns them into luxury paper products.

Craig Butterworth, from Plain Creative, said: “There are always powerful stories to tell at James Cropper, so providing a flexible framework for content teams to keep the site fresh once live was also a primary goal.

"We are delighted with the end result and appreciate the hard work put in by all to get the site live in a tight time-frame.”

He said Plain Creative worked to view products and services from a customer perspective and align these with James Cropper’s business goals and give visitors to the website a similar customer experience to those visiting the paper mill itself.

All technical development work was undertaken by A Digital who were responsible for the selection of a new content management system to make maintaining the site and uploading content easier than it had previously been.

A Digital have also provided the cloud infrastructure for the site and will continue to provide ongoing support and maintenance.

A Digital director Andrew Armitage said: "This has been a fantastic collaboration between Cumbrian based companies to deliver a significant digital project.

"James Cropper is a leading name in the markets in which they operate and it's been a privilege to work alongside them and help them to showcase the cutting-edge work they do."

Richard Bracewell, marketing director at James Cropper, said: “Our new website has allowed us to bring together legacy sites into a single platform that provides a clear message of who we are, what we do and what we stand for.

"During development we worked closely with the teams at both Plain Creative and A Digital, so much so that they became an extension of our team at the mill and enabled the project to progress at pace.

"The response to the new website from employees, customers and investors alike has been overwhelmingly positive.”