Softbox appoints new Research and Product Development Director to drive forward its global R&D agenda

Softbox, a leading global innovator and provider of passive temperature-controlled packaging solutions for the pharmaceutical, life science and cold chain logistics industries, has announced the appointment of Sean Austerberry as Research and Product Development Director.

Sean will be responsible for all of Softbox’s global R&D, product development and intellectual property management. He will lead the technical teams and work closely with sales and commercial to drive product strategy and deliver robust product roadmaps for future growth. Furthermore, Sean will also be responsible for the oversight of the company’s global network of Qualification Labs and Technical Centres, ensuring Softbox maintains high-quality technical services and well-defined standards across all of its locations. His remit will include Manufacturing Engineering to ensure the new products developed are consistently and efficiently produced across the company’s global manufacturing network.

Sean has over 12 years’ experience in product design and development of award-winning products for global markets, and provides technical leadership, with integrity, tenacity, drive, and focus. He has spent the past seven years as Senior Design Engineer within the pharmaceutical cold chain industry, responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction through well-designed, innovative, and high-performance engineered products that meet high-quality standards, both locally and globally.

“I’m delighted to join Softbox as part of the global leadership team and lead product R&D to support further business growth,” said Sean Austerberry about his new role. “There are some exciting developments in the pipeline. There has never been a more exciting time to be involved in temperature-controlled packaging.”

Kevin Valentine, CEO at Softbox, commented: “I’m delighted to have Sean join the Softbox Leadership Team. His extensive product design experience coupled with his strong leadership in innovation and creative design processes will ensure Softbox continues to develop and deliver highly innovative temperature-controlled packaging solutions for our key markets and provide significant added value to our customers.  Sean understands the complexity of the cold chain industry and how to engineer the right solutions, he is a highly engaging customer facing design engineer that will inspire our regional design teams to develop “fit for purpose” packaging solutions for our customers around the world. He’ll be a great asset to our company and our customers.”