IG Design Group Featured on BBC Two’s Inside the Factory Christmas Special

Shown in the run-up to Christmas, the popular BBC Two show is fronted by Gregg Wallace, Cherry Healey and Ruth Goodman. The episode takes a look inside businesses who are vital to Christmas, including Britain’s biggest cake factory and IG Design Group, who produce over 450 million metres of bestselling wrapping paper each year.

Highlighted with its own segment in the programme, Cherry Healey visits IG Design Group’s Ystrad Mynach factory in South Wales, where enough wrapping paper is produced each year to wrap around the world at least 10 times.

It’s Christmas every day of the year, says studio designer Julia Williams, who is one of 41 creatives based at the factory. She talks Cherry through the process of mood boarding the latest trends to decide which wrapping paper will work in any given year.

Cherry was amazed to discover just how far ahead IG Design Group plans. Learning that this year’s wrapping papers were designed back in August 2015, she says “So when the sun was out and everyone was eating ice cream, you were deciding the Christmas paper for this year?”

Cherry’s awe continues as she follows the production through to the factory floor, where she’s given the task of cranking the printing of her Christmas paper up to 600 metres per minute. It’s on the shop floor where she discovers just how printing on an epic scale works, including how the inks are mixed and exactly what it takes to give our wrapping papers their distinctive sparkle.

The final step of Cherry’s journey within IG Design Group is watching the paper being cut into smaller rolls, before being shipped to major retailers as a ready-to-sell product.

Inside the Factory Christmas Special is available to watch on BBC iPlayer now.

Click here to watch Inside the Factory Christmas Special on BBC iPlayer.