This time they have really done it big

Cartotecnica Goldprint has doubled its turnover and multiplied its machine pool, production technologies and offer in one fell swoop, and now it has set its sights on foreign markets. Folding and rigid boxes for luxury goods, personal care, food and pharmaceuticals, but now also displays and posters, all in a quality offer with careful attention to service.  Stefano Lavorini

Six production sites, five in Italy and one in Poland, making a total of nearly 50,000 square meters covered and employing 260; a turnover that should reach 60 million euro by 2016 (compared to just over 10 five years ago); seven offset printers, two digital printers, three flexo machines, seven die-cutters, nine folding and gluing machines, two corrugators, six automatic lines for boxes, 5 hot stamping Bma as well as a long list of auxiliary equipment: these are the February numbers to give an idea of what Cartotecnica Goldprint has become following its acquisition of GPP Industrie Grafiche srl, completed in December 2015.
Not too shabby for a concern known until recently for having prospered in the luxury packaging market, largely thanks to a few major customers.
This merger represents the start of a new era, whose origins and prospects I had the chance to discuss with Pierpaolo Bramucci, who owns this impressive firm jointly with his sister Elena and father Emilio.

How and why did you acquire GPP Industrie Grafiche?
It has always been clear to us that European paper industry operators were becoming larger and larger in response to the recent concentration of brand owners.  Just consider Coty Inc’s recent acquisition of the multinational Procter & Gamble Specialty Beauty Business, which controls maybe half the major brands in the perfume market. Of course this is what drove us in recent years to undertake an agenda of external growth, starting with our 2013 acquisition of E. Siani spa, a producer of corrugated cardboard for box interiors. But there’s more: for over forty years, Goldprint’s core business has been in luxury packaging for high end fragrances and cosmetics, but now, with its acquisition of GPP, it enters the food, personal care and pharmaceutical sectors with a complete offer, including folding and rigid boxes, displays, posters, etc. In short, just one month since signing the deal, I feel like saying “1+1 makes 3”.

GPP has changed ownership several times over the last few years. What has remained of the original enterprise?
GPP has always been a prestigious concern in our sector, but unfortunately it has a troubled history. And so for us, it was and is a great brand to bring back. We bought the concern with no inherited debt deriving from the agreement. We are pursuing a program of restructuring to consolidate synergies and eliminate overlapping functions, but we have kept on most of GPP’s workforce: out of an initial 167, 130 people have kept their jobs.
Goldprint’s 2015 turnover was 31 million euro, compared to GPP’s 29 million, albeit with different margins. It should be clear, however, that we did not buy GPP in order to scrap it, but to keep on its customers. It has been bought out in order that it may continue doing what it has been doing. This is a decisive factor. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have paid off its debts, nor included in the budget new investments to update machinery.
I also want to underline two things. The first is that GPP still exists. Only the ownership has changed hands. Secondly, even though there are synergies in management, machinists and machinery, production generally, will remain separate: we will continue printing luxury packaging where we always have, and the same goes for other product lines.
We are now able to offer the best solution to users’ most disparate needs. This is effectively what much larger European firms have already done, producing everything, from cans for tomatoes to high end luxury boxes.
However, each of the market segments in which we operate - cases, rigid boxes, general packaging, displays, posters- has a consolidated turnover between 2 and 10 million euro.

You are engaged in a formidable program of product integration, but you have also acquired competencies, which presupposes a change in corporate culture…
Yes, our idea has been to diversify our business and thus to be able to serve all sectors of packaged consumer goods equally. We have created one of Italy’s largest enterprises, with five locations and 260 employed. In fact, with this year’s addition of GPP, Goldprint’s turnover should reach 55 to 60 million euro…

For now, an elite Goldprint team has been deployed to GPP, and with the more streamlined organization we are already seeing good results, which convinces me this operation will prove a success.
Actually, I’m convinced that both concerns have a lot to learn from each other, in the sense that there are processes, like printing, in which Goldprint has certainly reached a superior level of quality, while in other phases of production, like folding and gluing boxes, GPP stands out for competency and machinery.
In short, what we did well before, both at Goldprint and at GPP, we will continue to do in future, and we intend to do even better. GPP’s facility dedicated to producing boxes for pharma has remained exactly as we found it, with the same faces, and the same goes for the commercial side of its business, which is already accustomed to being a multibrand and is thus capable of selling a display, a rigid casket, a luxury box, etc.

Speaking of means of production: what equipment did you gain through this merger?
We’ve managed to put together a rather diverse and extensive machine pool. Just to give an idea of our offset printers, we have three Heidelbergs, two Mitsubishis, one KBA and one Roland, but we are evaluating replacements and new investments.
We have 15 Bobst machines, including die-cutters and hot foil, nine folding and gluing machines, two corrugators, one of which produces “nude wave” corrugation and laminates it with printed sheets. Then there are six Emmeci lines for rigid boxes, two of which just purchased, destined for Poland, where we have a 7,000 m facility near Warsaw.

This is also news: a new way to “ride the wave” of internationalization?
Yes. Indeed, to meet our customers halfway, we have decided to delocalize to Poland a large portion of our production of rigid boxes; this is why we purchased two new Emmeci lines, which will be joined by two of the four lines currently installed in Italy.
At the new site, we also intend to start up manual production of coated boxes, as well as assembly of displays for northern European markets. We are organizing ourselves and have already begun to put together a small in-house team made up of Goldprint staff and local machinists. As far as manual production goes, we have identified a Polish company with good expertise that will supply personnel ad hoc. It’s a promising project, and a worthy challenge, requiring us to act very fast. Indeed, we should start production in May.

I imagine that at this point it’s a matter of communicating to the market what you’re able to offer, and how you manage to be so good while operating in such diverse sectors.
At the state of the art, the market seems to agree: Goldprint customers, large and small, have nothing to fear, because virtually nothing will change. Multinationals see it as an advantage to have a larger supplier with more production sites. GPP’s customers, whom we reached out to of course, have generally warmed to us and expressed reassurance over the change in ownership. Furthermore, the merger also combines our R&D resources, bringing together competencies ranging from finishing and supports to new packaging development and engineering.
Moreover, Italy’s paper and converting industry has always been unique, but in recent years of crisis it has begun to show its limits. Nonetheless, many concerns have carried on thanks to an offer characterized by quality, service and competitive prices, all that a customer could ask for.  We want to be among these  concerns.