History of Victor Stationery

Victor Stationery is a family-run business which has been around for many years! We've been making quality paper stationery and exercise books since the early 1920s. Our experience in producing quality paper stationery guarantees that all of our products are made to the highest possible quality standard.

It all began in 1882 with a bookshop specialising in selling bibles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In the 1920s we commenced stationery production in Victoria Street, Belfast, and this is where Victor Stationery was born.

Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Victor Stationery continued to grow in Ireland and the rest of the UK. In 1989 Victor bought EJ Arnold (England), doubling the company size and becoming the number one supplier of school exercise books in the UK and Ireland.

In the 1990s, Victor created the RHINO Stationery brand, which is now recognised throughout the UK as a leading supplier of educational paper stationery. In the early 2000s, our company was still growing and the decision was made to move the main factory from Belfast to Tallinn, Estonia.

Being located in the EU ensures we have a consistent supply chain; closing the gap between forest, paper mill, factory, and warehouse and minimising the challenges of long-distance supply from the Far East. Our investment in two state-of-the-art machines has delivered a 35% increase in production capacity.

In 2013 we took to the online market and the RHINO Stationery website went live. We also moved into the personalised stationery business with our customised notebook website, My Own Stationery.

PRESENT

Today our vision is to bring quality paper stationery to the world through the philosophy of Lean, producing high-quality paper stationery for business customers, our partners and direct customers, to enable people to express the written word in every stage of life. Underpinned by the philosophy of LEAN, our vision is to be the first choice for paper stationery.

OUR MISSION

“Assisting people of all ages to improve their learning & communication through the use of environmentally-conscious quality paper products”

The principle of LEAN is to create more with less

Our Lean management philosophy is to eliminate every waste that we see in our actions, thus becoming more efficient each and every day – continually improving. We action LEAN using Kaizens, which helps us address any wastage in either time or resources, whilst continually improving our efficiencies and providing our customers with our excellent service levels, price, quality and value promise.

Value to customers:

• Shorter lead times
• Smaller batch sizes
• Minimum production runs
• Eco-friendliness
• Flexibility
• Quality
• Less waste

As we're experts in producing exercise books, it’s not surprising to note that we manufacture a staggering 50 million exercise books every year. 

And 75% of our manufactured goods go to the UK, our biggest market, followed by Europe, in particular, Scandinavia and Ireland. 

Certifications

Preservation of the environment remains at the centre of our business ethics. We continue to invest in ways to minimise the environmental impact of our operations, and our factory has also achieved several environmental certifications.

These include FSC® (FSC-C092742), PEFC certification along with the well-known Swan label accreditation.

This reflects the high environmental standards required not only in materials used but also in the production methods and waste handling, with special emphasis on continuous improvement using Kaizen.

We print with water-based and solvent-free ink, and because paper is a 100% plant-based product, all our paper contents are 100% recyclable.

Because we are continually investing in ways to minimise the environmental impact of our operations, as your partner and supplier, we can help you achieve your own eco targets.

We are on a mission to eliminate single-use plastics and in 2020 we replaced plastic shrink-wrap on RHINO exercise books with a sustainable paper banding, making the wrapping recyclable and helping us eliminate over 60 tonnes of single-use plastic per year!