Home Manufacturing & Industry Agencies collaborate to deliver innovative web project for James Cropper

Agencies collaborate to deliver innovative web project for James Cropper

A new collaboration between three Cumbrian businesses has resulted in the successful delivery of an exciting digital project.

Plain Creative and neighbouring agency A Digital teamed up as part of a joint pitch to design and build a new corporate website for the advanced materials and specialist paper products group, James Cropper PLC.

The brief was to create an online space which told a simple, customer centred and cohesive story and united James Cropper’s three areas of business – Speciality Papers, Colourform and Technical Fibre Products.

This bold new site would be positioned around the needs of the customer and present a clean slate on which to set out the products, services, HR and Investor sections of the business. It would provide James Cropper with a place in which it could easily communicate with world leading luxury brands, employees and potential recruits. Importantly, it would also bring forward fibre innovation, colour expertise and industry professionals with an interest in James Cropper’s innovative ideas and experiences.


The business also wanted a platform from which 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 beautiful paper products.

Delivering the brief involved carrying out in-depth discovery and planning sessions with key department heads to map out content and develop the look and feel of the site; reviewing the existing web pages and working through any areas of concern.

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.

Existing, long-standing relationships between the three organisations, located only a stone’s throw from one another in Kendal and Burneside, provided a level of understanding and communication which allowed the project to flourish.

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. For this they selected CraftCMS due to its editorial and technical flexibility, ease of use and low cost of ownership. A Digital have also provided the cloud infrastructure for the site and will continue to provide ongoing support and maintenance.

Now that the website is complete, the three businesses are looking back with pride on what they achieved together and have said they will continue to learn from and develop the site as customers engage.

Richard Bracewell, Marketing Director from 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.”

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. A Digital’s extensive knowledge of Craft meant the project could provide James Cropper simple, but powerful ‘pick-and-mix’ page-build functionality through the CMS. 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.”

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.”