25th February 2025
Our People – Kristian Howson
Kristian Howson is our Design Optimisation Manager.
Having studied Illustration at college he joined his family’s businesses which specialised in die-making for the packaging industry. After five years he moved on, after the family business ceased trading. It was a glance through a local newspaper when he saw a CAD design job advertised at CBC. He applied and the rest is history.
He was promoted to his current role in 2023 and now has a role which has two main parts.
One is to design the structural aspects of packaging, creating samples, and preparing jobs for production receiving work from our sales team, through emails, or by visiting customers.
Alongside this he focuses on production optimisation across all elements of the process. This can involve redesigning boxes, enhancing machinery, or creating more efficient manufacturing routes. He assists customers with their packing, whether it’s manual or automated work so the CBC team can create packaging solutions which suit customers operational requirements. By identifying the source of the customers problem and he determines what needs to be done to improve the situation.
Just for fun…
If you didn’t work in corrugated, what would you do?
I feel it may be something active. Although creative, I’ve always enjoyed sports. Knowing there aren’t many rich artists or designers, a career in the sports industry would probably be my second choice, but plain brown cardboard boxes are just too appealing!
A fact people may not know about you
Through CBC I’ve been lucky enough to take part in two Red Bull Soapbox Races and finished first in vehicle design. We achieved international stardom for the design (short period) with newspapers in Japan, America and Australia contacting me.
What you like to do outside of work
In my spare time I mainly climb, hike, wild swim, and gym. I train in the gym in the mornings and climb in the evenings, it’s very rare I’m caught sitting around doing nothing but if I am I will probably on my PS5.
