“Last week, I visited The Senator Group’s headquarters and factory sites in Accrington, Lancashire.

Upon arrival, I was shown around the new and improved showroom, discussing the products on offer. Shortly after, we toured the new Headquarter offices, which are, effectively, a working showroom. Each team designed their areas independently, each having their own furniture requirements to suit their own needs. This perfectly blends together almost every product in the Senator Spec Guide!

Desking

Once the initial tours were over, we were guided around the desking factory. The factory itself is impressive as you walk in, but the most impressive concept is seeing a piece of chipboard enter the building, following it around a conveyor-like setup and watching it being transformed into a finished product, ready for delivery.

Dinner and a glass of red followed, prior to tours of the seating and recycling facility on the Thursday.

Seating

The seating factory was a personal favourite, seeing how many hands a chair passes through for it to be a complete product astounds me. The components are delivered to site, and must then be assembled whilst upholsterers are going about their job, prior to sending their handywork to the assemblers. Once a task chair is complete, it must be packaged and loaded before it begins its travel to a dealer’s warehouse.

Recycling

Finally, the recycling facility – where I learnt about how everything, from components to polystyrene, is recycled. Each material has alternative routes to being reused/recycled and due to the large number of different materials, there are too many to name. However, the idea that I was using coffee coasters from recycled plastic chair bases in a room heated from recycled wood/chipboard was very entertaining. Senator are proud of their environmental stance within the market and, after witnessing their Sustain team first-hand, so they should be.

Overall, this was a fantastic trip, with good company and a lot taken away from it – product, production and recycling knowledge.”

Elliot