Leicester firm puts faith in youth apprenticeship programme

Chesapeake Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Packaging in Leicester has challenged its apprentices to complete a real-life project to design and brand a healthcare packaging product. The task was set by the company so a pre-press and two print litho apprentices could gain hands-on experience of packaging, then printing and finishing a product.

The project was set to provide a unique opportunity for the apprentices to work alongside the company’s print production unit whilst at college.  This covered learning about pre-press, press and post press on a rotation system to give them a better understanding of the print production workflow process.

Steve Johns, Print Room Supervisor at Chesapeake Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Packaging said: “I wanted to give our apprentices an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the process and procedures within each department and encourage them to solve problems within the team.  This project has also had the added benefit of increasing the site’s awareness of the apprenticeship programme.”

Laura Wade, Business Delivery Manager for Print at Leicester College said: “This type of project set by Steve and the team at Chesapeake really demonstrates their commitment to developing their apprentices, they have invested a great deal of time providing the three apprentices with the skills to create and produce this fabulous product.”