PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2013

EDITOURS REPORTS 20 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 03/13 www.petpla.net to expand its purely marketing and sales activities on the basis of its own production and, with this idea, literally brought Switzerland and its universally acknowledged quality over to Russia. Director Lebedev recalls the start of his activities at Safe Cap. His origins are on the bottling side of things, because he was active in the 1990s as General Manager of RC Cola Russia and had already had some experience here with raw materials and closures. The corporate aims which Mr Leb- edev was striving to achieve did not, however, entirely square with those of the shareholders and this led to Lebedev quitting his job and setting up Safe Cap instead. “For ethical reasons I was simply not keen to stay in the same segment and wanted to do something other than bottling. In addition, there were contacts with the closure cap sector available, we knew each other and were on good terms“. The plant, according to Mr Gavrilov, commenced produc- tion of closures under the name of Safe Cap in 1999 on three injection moulding machines; at the time output was still com- paratively low at around 120 million closures per year. The experience already obtained in sales also generated the idea in 1999 of keeping this area of business and extending it. This led to the first contract with Alcoa CSI, whose closures were now also being marketed via Safe Cap for Russia. Another year further down the line, said Mr Gavrilov, and sales offices were already being opened to enable opera- tions to take place in close proximity to customers in South- ern Russia, Siberia, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine. This was followed by the contract for the distribution of Alcoa closures in Kazakhstan. Safe Cap profits from the world-wide image of Swiss quality, particularly in relation to precision technical work, as a fundamental part of its corporate concept. Follow- ing on from the successes of the first few years, they decided to focus entirely on the production location of Fryazino in order to produce this quality. In 2001 Safe Cap acquired the Plastic Division of Hoff- mann AG and relocated it to Russia from Thun, including machines, technology, patents and logos, with a view to manufacturing at this high level of production themselves. In total, 70% of the division went to Fryazino and 30% to Poland where there is a further plant manufacturing under the Safe Cap brand name. As a result, standing on the premises occu- pied by a former workshop and following major reconstruction and extension works, what can be seen today are production and warehousing facilities along with office accommodation extending to an area of more than 11,000m 2 . There is still any amount of space available for future expansion. There are 21 entire lines deployed, of which 14 are Netstal, two Husky, two Arburg and three Demag. There is also Safe Cap’s first Sacmi compression moulding line for manufacturing PCO 1881 clo- sures. Overall, the portfolio currently comprises more than 20 different types of closures and handles (PP, PE) in sizes rang- ing from 28mm and 48mm for CSD, juices, water and beer. The level of production has also increased more than ten-fold over the past 13 years to a figure of 2.0 billion pieces today – and there is absolutely no shortage of upward capacity. Safe Cap‘s customers include the breweries Efes, Heineken and SAB Miller. The company currently employs 110 staff. The sale of external closures has also been boosted and topped up with (for example) contracts with Corvaglia and Smartseal for Russia and the CIS States. “It is extremely important to us to preserve the association in people’s minds that Switzerland stands for quality” says Mr Lebedev. This is the reason for the company’s ”Swiss Packaging Solution“ image. According to Mr Lebedev, Safe Cap does not prioritise orders from the giants of the beverages sector over other customers, endeavouring rather to treat every customer as equally important. A further important factor as far as Safe Cap is concerned is that they focus on plastic caps and han- dles production rather than preforms and closures combina- tion. Again according to Mr Lebedev, this gives the company the flexibility to fulfil more complex orders, for example up to five top printing colours, various types of laser printing, embossment, oxygen scavenger, handles, etc. www.safecap.ru July 12, 2012 Netstal We met: Sergey Kozhin, Sales Manager Russia & CIS Svetlana Ansimova, Sales Manager, Netstal In the foyer of the Netstal-BKM-”Casa“: (f.l.t.r.) Sergey Kozhin, Kay Krüger and Svetlana Ansimova Netstal‘s support from Moscow With around 300 Netstal machines on the Russian market, the need for a competent and prompt local service facility was an obvious priority. As the company’s share of the market grew and the bureaucratic hurdles involved in the import of machine parts increased, the decision was taken in 2007 to set up a support facility inside Russia itself to service local Netstal customers. The result was the proposal, in 2008, for an office sharing arrangement with the Krauss-Maffei subsidiary BKM and this joint facility was subsequently set up in the heart of Moscow. This is the only office serving the whole of Russia and the CIS States which means that the five Netstal employees have more than enough work on their hands. The team is led by Krauss-Maffei executive Dieter Brun- ner, and from this office sharing facility (known to all as the “Casa“) Sergey Kozhin, Sales Manager, manages the five members of staff who cover the entire territory. Sergey himself is often to be found on the road, visiting customers, whilst his office-based colleague Svetlana Ansimova mainly takes care of any business matters or back office activities and keeps in