Flint Group Realigns Organization
LUXEMBOURG—Flint Group has announced a customer-oriented organization structure aimed at enabling customers to have full access to Flint Group’s broad product portfolio through a single sales contact, supported by in-depth technical support. The company said this will align the organization to market segments and customer applications enabling Flint Group to provide advantages to customers through value, quality, and innovation while delivering enhanced benefits on a communication, technical expertize, service, and support level at a lower cost.
Product lines serving the Print Media Market for production of newspapers, inserts, magazines, catalogues, direct mail, stationery, forms, etc. have now been integrated to form the regionalized Print Media Divisions, Print Media Europe, and Print Media North America.
Commenting on the new strategic changes to the organization, Charles Knott, CEO of Flint Group said, "Our business units can now offer the full range of products and services demanded by the Print Media market comprising coldset inks, newspaper flexo inks, heatset inks, publication gravure inks, sheetfed inks as well as press room chemicals, printing blankets and sleeves for all offset printing processes."
Charles Knott concluded, "We want to make doing business with us easier and more efficient for our Print Media customers by offering a main contact person at Flint Group to cover the total range of products and services for their business."
Dermot Healy, vice president of Day International Europe, has been named president, Print Media Europe, while Bill Miller, president, Inks Americas, now has the position president, Print Media North America. Dennis R. Wolters, president of Day International, announced that he will retire end of June. Until then, he will continue to support and advise the Flint Group Executive Management Team on further projects that were initiated with the re-organization.
"It became apparent soon after Day was acquired by Flint Group, that we could only provide the full benefit of the complementary product ranges to our customers if we were to bring the offset inks businesses, the printing blankets and press room chemicals businesses which serve the same markets, closer together," says Dennis Wolters. "In doing this it would also make dealing with us more efficient. We also have started to exploit the potential that exists in bringing the respective research and development activities and technical service teams closer together. We are committed to drive performance further beyond the point of improving each single product focusing on their interaction on the press to further optimize the printing process."
In Asia-Pacific, Flint Group will transition over time from a country-based structure to a divisional organization. As a first step, Brent Stephen, in addition to his primary responsibility as managing director, Australia/New Zealand, will lead the Print Media business in Asia-Pacific as senior vice president for Print Media Asia.
Further Flint Group has formed a global Packaging and Narrow Web division, comprising the Packaging Inks business activities of Flint Group in Europe and North America and the global Flint Group Narrow Web business. The division is headed by Dr. Dirk Aulbert, who formerly held the position of president, inks, Europe in Flint Group. The Packaging and Narrow Web division manufactures and markets a wide range of printing inks and coatings for the packaging and label markets worldwide.
"The global reach of the new business unit and its clear focus on the packaging and label market will enable us to provide tailored products and services to international packaging and label printers across all regions and providing global consultancy services to brand owners," said Aulbert. "The Packaging and Narrow Web Management team are committed to strengthen and increase investment into the R&D and technology platform to provide innovative packaging solutions to brand owners and retailers. We very much see this as pivotal to our success, particularly in markets that are characterized by constant and rapid changes."
Aulbert continued, "We will steer our marketing and product development centrally to leverage formulation expertise, best-in-class standards and know-how across the sites, regions and segments. At the same time we are committed to a local sales and technical customer service model that in many cases already today gives us more local presence than many of our local competitors can offer."
When asked whether the re-organization was also driven by the current economic conditions Knott answered, "After the major acquisitions between 2004 and 2007 we focussed our efforts on the physical integration of the various companies that formed Flint Group as it is today. We improved our efficiency enormously and as such our customers benefited from it. However, to foster growth we proactively want to pick up our customers in their places by adapting our organization to fit to the markets our customers operate in. So while the decision to reorganize was taken as a proactive step long before the economic crisis became apparent, I would consider it the right move at the right time."
Flint Group announced the reorganization with immediate effect.
