Pushing the Envelope for fifty years

MILESTONE Trimfold Envelopes celebrates half a century of production and employment in heritage town

TRIMFOLD ENVELOPES, the only mass producer of envelopes on the island of Ireland, has marked a huge milestone, celebrating 50 years in business on Monday 12th July – exactly 50 years to the day when the company was founded on Monday 12th July 1971, and they have been making envelopes in the heritage town of Trim ever since!

The company was originally set up by local entrepreneurs Christopher Buckley and his sister Barbara Allen, who worked for another envelope factory that was based in Trim but had made the decision to close. With the help of some local investors, including Norman Pratt and Matt Gilsenan, they started to hand produce envelopes in Mill Street in Trim town.

The company moved to its present location circa 1974 and since that time the company has grown from strength to strength, expanding to their current premises in the Eamon Duggan Estate on the Athboy Road, where a modern 100,000 square feet plant comprises 78,000 square feet of manufacturing facilities and 22,000 square feet of warehousing.

Trimfold now employs over 60 experienced production staff, using state of the art equipment, ensuring they have the capability to meet any customer requirement, including print, ranging from a few hundred envelopes to several million at a time.

In 2006 Trimfold Envelopes became part of the Mayer Kuvert network, Europe’s largest independently owned envelope manufacturing group. With over 30 plants throughout Europe, the Mayer Kuvert network pro duces over 45,000,000 envelopes per day and continues to be at the cutting edge of envelope manufacture in Europe, ensuring Trimfold Envelopes place in modern envelope production.

In 2017, Trimfold Envelopes acquired Koverto Ltd a printer and broker of envelopes based in Kilkenny. Trimfold purchased all of the machinery and intellectual property of Koverto and its sister company, Colour World. They retained a sales office and sales team in Kilkenny, where there are three salespeople and a pre-press designer based in modern offices in the Purcellsinch Industrial Estate.

Perhaps one of the most unusual requests the company received from a customer was when Hollywood came knocking in 1994 when Mel Gibson came to Trim to film the epic movie Braveheart. Trimfold Envelopes warehouse was used both as a storage area for props and also as a filming location for the famous deathbed scene where the horrible English King Longshanks dies!

Trimfold Envelopes Managing Director, Eugene Healy, has been part of the Trimfold Envelopes team for 46 of the past 50 years, joining the company in 1975 for holiday work, his intention was to earn some money and move on to other career paths that he had in mind, and the rest as they say is history!

Many of Trimfold Envelopes staff are local people, and some have been with the company for over 40 years. Of course, there is also a younger generation now developing in the company, this is important for the longevity of the business.

“I just want to thank everyone for all their lovely birthday wishes for our company and I particularly want to thank all our staff past and present, and also anyone who was ever involved in the company in any way, as without you and your hard work and dedication, Trimfold Envelopes would not be here today," Eugene Healy says.

“We had a great 50th celebration safely outside in the sunshine onsite on our actual birthday, and we had a birthday cake and raised a glass of alcohol free bubbles to all those who have built the company to where it is today, and hopefully when things get back to some kind of normal when COVID is behind us, we will have a proper party out on the lawn for all family and friends of Trimfold Envelopes.”

In the meantime, we have marked the event with some new flagpoles and signage at our factory to mark our great milestone!” Trimfold Envelopes pre pared a goodie bag and card for all employees to attend their birthday event and part of that invite include a poem written by Eugene for the occasion.

50 Years Old

50 years old, and still going strong.

There have been many changes, some right, some wrong.

In the next 50 years, more changes will come.

Our people will change, to this we must succumb.

But Trimfold lives on, through the passage of time.

It will further mature, and itself redefine.

Like any good book, we look forward to the next chapter.

With fears, worries, excitement, and perhaps a little laughter.

We have many to thank, for reaching this age.

People past and present, both front and backstage.

Without who’s hard work, resilience, and foresight,

Has ensured that our time in business, would never be finite.

We have come a long way, since nineteen seventy-one.

We have seen a lot, made a lot, and still more to be done.

So please raise a glass, to toast this milestone of gold.

Let us look forward, as we continue to print and fold.

© Eugene Healy.