Haven’t talked to Mitsubishi in a while. We are on Zoom with Giovanni Bettini, Head of Sales of Corrugating Machinery Division at MHI EMEA.
Hello, Giovanni. How are you? A lot of time has passed since our last interview. What do you see in the world, in Europe, in Italy, in general?
Regarding the corrugated board industry in the last year, we could see a big acquisition by Smurfit Kappa, which acquired WestRock. And now there are, you know, not only rumors but official declarations that by the 7th of March, Mondi may make a bid to buy DS Smith Group.
So these are big changes, of course, in the world. And these big changes also have brought a kind of frozen investment by all these groups. So what I see now is that a lot of independent companies or smaller groups are investing. You know, 2023 was a period with not many or very few investments, but now we see that there are many inquiries.
We also got important orders from the beginning of this year. And we see a lot of smaller companies that have decided to invest in new machines. Maybe they want to be ready when the wave will go up again and then they will increase the demand for boxes. These smaller groups, which are very flexible, we see that they are going to buy machines in the coming months.
We can talk about MHI equipment and overall performance in 2023. Which equipment was the most popular?
Like in the past years, the most popular equipment was again, the EVOL. Now we have sold a reasonable amount of EVOL. Also, considering that, as I said earlier, 2023 was not one of the best years in terms of sales turnover, but the most sellable machine was, again, the EVOL.
Champions don’t change
No.
Giovanni, last year you announced a new model for the Flexo Folder Gluer MC-100. Have you started mass production?
We have sold a few MC-100 machines in Europe. Also in the United States and in Asia. We have not started mass production yet, because, of course, we have to complete our assessment of the performance and the reliability of the machine. So we have not started massive production of this machine yet, but we have sold machines in every continent already.
Based on the trends of 2023, what do you expect in 2024?
We have already received important orders from South America, especially from Brazil, for complete corrugators and other units, in January this year.
We expect 2024 to be, of course, a better year than 2023. We expect a lot of sales to smaller companies, as I said earlier. These are our expectations.
And of course, we don’t know yet what is going to happen between Mondi and DS Smith, which, as I said, can freeze their investments a little bit. It could be that in 2024 Smurfit Kappa and WestRock will start investing again in new machines. But it is not something that I know at the moment. That is my hope that they will start investing again.
I have a question about Ukraine, because it is my country. How successful is EVOL in Kyiv CPM ? And Tripolski packaging mill, for example. And maybe there is some interest from another Ukrainian corrugated producer.
The two machines in Ukraine are running very well. They’re running 24/7, and we are servicing them from the Netherlands. We support them remotely, of course. And then we support them also with spare parts.
We know that the machines are running well, even considering the current circumstances. We have also met some Ukrainian customers, who were present at FEFCO. They would like to buy machines and they have said they are ready to buy our machines when we are at peace again in the area.
Do you have a buyback program for your customers who purchase new models? Do you provide equipment restoration services to your clients?
Regarding the buyback program, we don’t do it. Mitsubishi has never done it. You know, this is normally the customer who sells the machine through secondhand dealers or in many cases, they put the machines in another plant or where they need less productivity. We don’t have a buyback program.
Regarding the equipment restoration and service offer, of course, I understand, you mean it for our machines? Yes, we do that. We do retrofits and upgrades of our existing machines. And we offer service contracts to our customers.
Which exhibitions, conferences and seminars is MHI EMEA participating in this year?
We will attend some smaller exhibitions. We will attend the FEFCO Summit in May in Greece. We are also attending some local exhibitions, like in the UK, but we will not have a booth there, only our people. And in September, we will attend the SuperCorrExpo in Orlando, where we will have a booth as MHI.
Do you have a booth at SuperCorrExpo?
MHI America has a booth. We, as MHI EMEA, will also join them.
Maybe I forgot to ask something. Finally, what do you want to tell your clients or customers?
What I want to tell our customers is that we have changed our service system a lot and hired new service engineers to work in the field for the installations or service of the machines.
We have also created a service center in the Netherlands, where we have experienced engineers who are ready to answer customers’ calls and provide them with remote support, both mechanical and electrical, from our office.
We have also increased the amount of spare parts that we have in our warehouse in the Netherlands. So now we have four big warehouses in the world: one in Japan, one in Europe, and two in the United States (one in Baltimore and one in Las Vegas).
We have also started a service center in Brazil and we are going to start one in South Africa as well, because MHI EMEA covers those regions too. We have a lot of machines in Brazil and South Africa and we are opening service centers there. We have really restructured our service capabilities with more engineers and an improved organization.
Thank you very much for the interview!
Thank you very much. And, hope to see you soon. I see that in the back you have the palms with the sand. So I believe you are calling from the Maldives.
This is my dream:)
corruga.expert
