Apprentice Packaging Technologist Review

My role is to be a fundamentally the same as a full time packaging technologist, this means that I work across 4 pillars of packaging technology, laboratory work, packaging manufacturing, packaging design and brand packaging. My day to day role includes going into Unilever's state of the art AMC (Advanced Manufacturing Centre) and running packaging trials on unique machinery, these trials are critical to our operational understanding of an individual pack and the scale up to thousands of these packs.

So far in my 2 years I have developed on a lot of my already existing skills, including presentation skills, self-confidence skills and public speaking skills. These are fundamental to any role in a business environment and have greatly been supported by Unilever to help me become more than competent in these skills. I have also learn't how to opertate 8 pieces of heavy duty machinery that require many weeks of training in order to use safely without supervison. Overall this apprenticeship has also allowed me to become far more compentant at basic life skills that are taken for granted such as time management and good organisation.

I really enjoy my programme. I always wanted to work in a manufacturing environment as a professional engineer and being able to do both my job as a packaging technologist and study as a professional engineer is very much enjoyable for me. Unilever provides a hugely positive environment to work in encouraging learning and positive wellbeing.

My programme is very well organised. I am in my teams 3rd year of running this programme and as such it's a well known path for the apprentices to take, which placements in this order; laboratory work, design engineering work, AMC (Advanced manufacturing centre) work and then finally a brand packaging placement. This is coupled with great connections with the university on a friday, being given the full day to deal with our workload for university. One of the great things about this structure though is that it is somewhat flexible so if an apprentice really enjoys design engineering work it is possible to continue incorporating that into their individual workload.

As an apprentice we recieve the same amount of support as anyone else in Unilever if not more. We have access to all mental health support and physical health support that we could require with an emphasis on one to one conversations with professionals who you can trust. Equally as an apprentice we are always treated with respect and are given support if we are struggling with a new placement or an overburdened workload. No one is ever left to struggle on their own.

We recieve a good amount of support from Liverpool John Moore's Univeristy. It is somewhat difficult to look after a uniquely small class of 9 part time students all from different companies across the north west and as such I think they do a splendid job lookign after us and accomodating for us. They know we have unique work deadlines that add for more complication to our university deadlines which they will often help us compensate for. They also provide plenty of personal support if we are stuggling in a certain subject area.

An engineering degree is generally a fantastic degree to help in many job roles. Critical thinking and making rational logical conclusions through structured analysis are very useful qualities anywhere, however more specifically for me a manufacturing engineering degree has obvious benenfits to someone working in the field of manufacturing. It is incredibly useful to understand the engineering fundamentals behind the operating principles we use inhouse.

Yes, we have many as a site we have lots of clubs such as long distance running, a choir, a pool league and many others that I'm not even aware of! These are open to anyone on site and are often mentioned in our site newsletters helping people who many not know of them become aware of them. We also have a strong knit group of apprentices on site that often go out together outside of work.

Yes

I think Unilever is one of the best and most humane supportive companies that you can work for. It's fantastic to work for a company that has very similar outlooks as yourself, including a strong push for environmental wellbeing, social wellbeing and general worldwide equality. It's also amazing to work for a company that links so many people from all over the world together to work on tasks, my team and many on site are so culturally diverse it's wonderful and you can always learn something new from such an environment.

I think to get into Unilever you should show your personal interests, don't be afraid of being yourself, Unilever wants unique people who share the same drives as themselves. Do your research it really helps, I'm sure most people coming out of A-levels don't know anything about packaging, FMCG lab chemistry or whatever job role they may be applying for, so spend some time looking up or looking at Unilever products, spend some time thinking about why it is that someone chose to go with what they did. Someone somewhere did the job you are applying for so try and get into their shoes, it's often not as complicated an answer as you think!