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Unit 15, Star Road Trading Estate, Star Road, Partridge Green
Horsham
West Sussex
RH13 8RA
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More than a van racking specialist, Whitebox is home to the Organised Trades.
We provide, design and install van racking systems that save you time and help run your business more effectively.
Based in West Sussex, it's our mission to help you be more organised at work, so you have the freedom to focus on whatever is most important to you.
The Organised Trades
As the home of the Organised Trades, we help customers be more efficient in their day to day activities.
With over 500,000 hours saved since we launched in 2013, we're well on our way to our target of saving 10 million hours. We do this by helping customers be more productive, by helping them be more organised at work.
It's a good start, but our social and environmental activities go further. In fact, they touch everything we do.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, renature
At Whitebox, our environmental values can be seen in how we work with our customers in the workshop and on the road.
We see the environmental cost of our work and, however much we try, there's no way to be completely carbon neutral without a degree of carbon offsetting.
Of course, we do our best to limit our carbon footprint in the first place. To do this, we have solar panels installed on our well-insulated workshop. Plus, we take a strict reduce, reuse, recycle approach to our day to day work.
This starts by making sure we keep our own waste to an absolute minimum. Where we can't reduce waste or reuse resources ourselves, we work with local businesses to share and repurpose.
We seek out suppliers who share our sustainability values. System Edstrom, one of our main racking providers, recently switched to recyclable plastic wrapping. They also use steel rather than aluminium to produce their racking, with the advantage that steel is smelted at a lower temperature, meaning it has less of an environmental impact. What's more, it's manufactured efficiently in Sweden where 60% of the factory is run on hydro power. Meanwhile, Sortimo have just extended their warranty period to five years, although from experience, we know their products last much longer. In fact, we have transferred old van racking into new vans on several occasions, and each time the racking is as good as new, even after 10+ years.
Additionally, we help our customers reduce their carbon footprint. In fact, you could say that's at the heart of what we do. The lightweight van racking systems that we design and install for our clients help improve fuel efficiency, particularly compared to plywood alternatives. Added to that, our van racking is tough and durable and we regularly transfer old racking to new vans when our customers upgrade. Plus, by helping them be more organised, we help them avoid unnecessary journeys, reducing time spent on the road and saving fuel along the way.
Renaturing is a critical part of our approach. As co-founder and director of The Wellderness, Mark Cropley has a direct influence over the tree planting and nature restoration activities that the organisation and its community are involved in. Alongside the Wellderness, we've already planted hundreds of trees on the South Downs. Added to which, plans are in place for a living, moss planted wall outside our workshop.
People
As well as giving our customers the freedom to focus on their lives away from the tools, we make sure our employees, contractors and community are looked after, both inside and outside of work.
We run a four day week in the workshop, paying employees above the living wage. We value their efforts and pay what they're worth, not what we can get away with.
Everyone has a say in how the business is run, and not just in terms of processes and practices. Our employees get a say in their own safety and wellbeing, as well as in the strategy and the future direction of the company. Plus, we have an awesome coffee machine in the workshop!
Beyond our own people, we look after the community around us. The Wellderness is a community organisation, focusing on local people and nature. Besides which, our fundraising for the Sussex Community Foundation - including a barefoot climb of Snowdon - earned us the 2017 Business in the Community Award.