The Datum Report

Occupation 8114 · Process, plant and machine operatives

Plastics process operatives

Half of full-time plastics process operatives in the UK earn more than £32,644 a year, and half earn less.

Plastics process operatives attend and operate moulding, extruding, thermoforming, calendering, covering, cutting and other process equipment to make and repair plastic products.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is typically provided on-the-job, supplemented by specialised courses. NVQs/SVQs in Performing Manufacturing Operations at levels 1 and 2 and apprenticeships are available.

What the work involves

• prepares machine for operation by affixing any necessary attachments
• weighs and mixes ingredients, loads machine with plastic to be worked or regulates flow from feed conveyor or hopper
• monitors controls regulating temperature, pressure, etc. and operates moulding, extruding, calendering, thermoforming and covering machines
• inspects plastic products for defects, takes measurements and repairs plastic belting and sheathing
• trims, cuts and performs other finishing operations on plastic using hand and machine tools
• makes artificial eyes and contact lens discs, and makes and repairs spectacle frames and plastic parts of artificial limbs and other orthopaedic appliances

Also called

Extrusion operator (plastics mfr) · Fabricator (plastics mfr) · Injection moulder · Laminator (fibreglass) · Process worker (plastic goods mfr)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for plastics process operatives, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 3 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Chemical and related process operatives · Food, drink and tobacco process operatives · Metal making and treating process operatives · Process operatives n.e.c. · Textile process operatives