Meet Vickie

Krones UK are the UK subsidiary of Krones AG, the world market leader of packaging machinery. As you walk amongst the supermarket aisles, approximately one in every three bottles that you see are filled, labelled or packaged by Krones. The UK arm of the company was founded in 1953, and this year celebrates their platinum jubilee.

We chatted to Vickie about her diverse and dynamic role in the company, and her journey from traditional ‘big six’ accountancy partnerships, to something more caring, consistently and collaborative with the team at HURST.

My career with Krones started over ten years ago. Initially as a management accountant, before progressing to my current role of Commercial Director. It’s quite a diverse role - which can be incredibly interesting and rewarding, but also understandably quite challenging. So being surrounded by trusted, effective partners is particularly important.

Krones in the UK is a subsidiary of our parent company in Germany… although we have a strong and long-standing heritage of our own, having been established seven decades ago. Our core business focuses on supplying packaging equipment for the food and beverage industry, and we’re proud to have forged long-standing partnerships with many of the industry’s most loved consumer brands.

But we go beyond packaging too, and have separate businesses equipping brewhouses, as well as a specialist division for automation and logistics. It’s genuinely a very forward-thinking and inspiring place to be part of, with strong values and huge ambitions for the future.

And I suppose it was those values and ambitions that led us to meet HURST. We’d traditionally partnered with firms from ‘the big six’. Although we just weren’t getting the level of service we needed, and the lack of continuity and understanding of their teams became a growing frustration. It felt like we were given a whole different team every year, which added all sorts of unnecessary time, pressure and understanding, in what’s already a very complex audit. 

I can say the opposite is true with HURST. The service has been caring and consistent from day one, and the quality of advice we receive is genuinely excellent. 

Thinking back to the tender, I remember how strongly they spoke about their culture and their people, and they said our partnership would come above anything. That’s honestly the way things have felt - it’s quite unusual to meet one of the partners, but we work directly with Anthony as part of the day-to-day relationship - it just means we feel like a real priority, and the service is extremely personal.

We’re in the second year of our partnership with HURST, and their impact so far has revolved around our annual audit, alongside tax advisory services. Overall our impression is that they’re genuinely interested in us as a business and as people. They keep their promises, and in turn they give us real confidence - we value their input on every level, and that means a lot.

HURST in three words: Agile. Consistent. Professional.

To find out more about Krones UK, visit www.krones.com