Dickinson Robinson Group

The Dickinson Robinson Group or DRG was a British paper, printing and packaging company founded in 1966 as a result of a merger of John Dickinson Stationery Ltd and E. S. & A. Robinson Ltd creating one of the world's largest stationery and packaging companies. Products with a high public profile included Sellotape and Basildon Bond.

In 1978 DRG took over the Royal Sovereign group of companies which included well-known brand names such as Stephens inks, chalks and crayons; LePage's gums and adhesives; Seccotine; Patterson Blick; Vanguard stapling machines and Speedry magic markers.

In 1989 Roland Franklin (Pembridge Associates) acquired DRG with a leveraged buyout worth £900 million and the assets of the company were stripped.

Paper cup production

DRG Cups manufactured and distributed disposable paper cups throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, but with the emergence of the plastic cup which could be produced more economically and was of higher quality, the company began to flounder. This led to the closure of its production plant in Liverpool in 1983, as it proved too costly for DRG Cups to maintain a competitive position.^[1]

The company was eventually bought out by Polarcup (a subsidiary of Finland-based company Huhtamaki), which opened a new paper cup manufacturing plant in Devizes, Wiltshire, in 1984. Over the last three decades the production of paper cups in the UK has been overseen by a number of British companies including Benders^[2] and The Paper Cup Company, whilst foreign organisations such as Seda^[3] (Italy) and Solo (United States) have added competition to this market.

References