Rueesch on Heidelberg’s divestment of the Gallus Group to benpac
Yesterday afternoon (28 July 2020), we had a telephone conversation with Ferdinand Rueesch, the anchor shareholder and member of the Supervisory Lath of Heidelberg and Thomas Fichtl, the head of Corporate Public Relations and printing officeholder at Heidelberg. As most industry mavens know, Rueesch sold his remaining majority shares in Gallus to Heidelberg in 2014 in exchange for Heidelberg shares that brand him, with approximately 9% of the shareholding, the largest individual stakeholder in the company. He became, from that time, what is described as an 'anchor shareholder.'
Every bit a member of the Heidelberg board, he maintained his deep links with the label industry in a part that looked after fundamental Gallus Group accounts. The Gallus Group holding has just been acquired by benpac, a family-owned Swiss company. Rueesch will remain on the board of Heidelberg and as an ballast shareholder. With Gallus, he volition exist responsible for the key accounts equally before. We asked Fichtl and Ruesch when the deal will shut and when Heidelberg expects to get the Euro 120 million from benpac. Fichtl replied that all the formalities should be completed, and the money should come up by Q3 or the end of the 2022 calendar year.
Benpac's resources cardinal for Gallus developments
Like many who know Rueesch's manner of visiting customers worldwide and looking at their Gallus characterization and broad-spider web flexo presses (used for a variety of applications including security printing and liquid packaging), we were curious. What does the divestment hateful for both Heidelberg and benpac and the futurity of the Gallus Grouping? Ruesch and Fichtl assured us that the divestiture of the Gallus Grouping, is positive for all concerned, explaining, "It is an opportunity for benpac which has the financial resource to invest in Gallus and the evolution of the Gallus portfolio. It is a win-win for both every bit Heidelberg gains economically, equally it currently needs to maximize its liquidity."
Benpac produces filling machines, cappers, labeling solutions, plastic injection molding engineering, and paper-based packaging mechanism technology. Last year, the group took over one of Müller-Martini's operations in Stans to use this centrally located site as a base for some of its activities in Switzerland. At the aforementioned time, the group, with some 3150 employees in Europe and the Americas, took over Packsys Global in Thailand. Renamed benpac packaging, the Thai constitute specializes in high-speed droplets tube production and filling lines.
Greenbacks is king
As with other High german applied science companies that rely on global exports, sales are estimated past the industry'southward association to decrease considering of the Covid-19 pandemic, from 30 to 50% this year. Fichtl said one could wait Heidelberg sales to reject by maybe every bit much as 30%. "Equally they say in such times, cash is male monarch. However, keep in mind that the transformation programme of Heidelberg began before the Coronavirus pandemic."
Heidelberg volition proceed to sell and service the Gallus presses and supply Gallus with the digital systems that become into the Gallus Labelfire digital printing. The Labelfire is said to have about 40 installations worldwide, and Heidelberg will continue to support its development, although it has stopped producing its B1 sheetfed digital press.
The main plan is for Heidelberg to stick to the core market place of sheetfed starting time that it still dominates in terms of market share and with a footprint of more than 5,000 machines effectually the earth. Over 50% of this footprint is used for press monocartons.
Nosotros asked about the nature of Heidelberg's investment in printed electronics and organics that was likewise appear last week, preceding the Gallus Grouping auction announcement. Fichtl clarified that this was a project several partners initiated with the German language government'due south support in 2008. "It has fructified over ten years with the InnovationLab and Heidelberg deciding to become a manufacturer of printed electronics and organics and not as a seller of applied science."
Our customers must be successful for themselves
We asked Rueesch about what the forthcoming Gallus Group developments might be with benpac in control. He said that although cooperative discussions have begun, "It is too early to answer, and the piece of work of evaluating the portfolio will happen in the coming weeks.
When asked nigh what he has learned in his fourth dimension at Heidelberg, Rueesch said, "One has to understand that the label manufacture has its own language but as the folding carton manufacture has its language. It is of import not merely to know your machine but the customers and their applications. We have to brand the customers successful for themselves, and we need to sympathize the domains in which they operate, in deep particular. And the shortest and most direct line for their success must be contained in our answers for them."
The headline and tagline of this article have been exchanged on 30 Jan 2021.
Source: https://packagingsouthasia.com/events/talking-to-ferdinand-rueesch/
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