Serbian high technology goes global - Italy's TMC becomes distributor of packaging machines made by Cacak-based Stax

In an endless sea of bad economic news, we`ve recently found an encouraging one. Namely, a manufacturer of packaging machines, Stax Technologies, has signed an agreement with the Italian company TMC from Bologna on the distribution of products from Cacak.

It rarely happens that a world-renowned company asks to become an exclusive representative and a vendor of high technology from Serbia. Namely, TMC (Tissue Machine Company) is a leader in the production of packaging machines for toilet rolls and kitchen paper towels as well as one of the most respected players in the tissue converting industry.

Stevan Kalos, sales director at Stax, says to eKapija that TMC has a developed sales network on all continents and markets worldwide.

- It is a company drastically bigger than Stax, so that we see this agreement as our ticket to a business platform that will raise our company to new business heights in no time.

As Kalos explains, Stax packaging machines will still sell under the Stax brand, meaning that they will be able to keep on developing the brand on which they have been working for as many as 10 years now.

- In order for those readers who are not so familiar with this industry to better grasp the significance of this business achievement, I will use an example from the automotive industry: Italian manufacturers of paper packaging machines are as respected in the tissue converting industry as German car makers are in the automotive industry.

Stax, whose machines are in use worldwide, from Brazil to Siberia and from Mauritius to Canada, expects this new cooperation to help it boost production by minimum 30 percent.

- The sales of these machines in the global market is highly dependent on the global and regional economy. The higher the GDP of a country, the higher its standard and, therefore, the bigger the consumption of tissue paper per capita. India and the USA are good example. While each citizen of India consumes 10 grams of tissue paper per year, people in the USA consume about 20 kilograms of that paper a year per capita.

The larger the consumption of toilet rolls, kitchen paper towels, napkins and paper and wet handkerchiefs, the bigger the need for their production. This is where Stax gets a chance with its machines that are already widely deemed robust, but simple and easy to handle.

- By connecting with TMC we gain access to every prospective client in the world, reduce the costs of promotion and exhibiting at trade fairs, and move from a passive approach to sales (exhibiting at trade fairs and waiting for a potential buyer to contact us) to an active approach to sales, which involves meeting with buyers in their environment and advising them on how to improve, increase or diversify their production capacity.

According to our interlocutor, one of the first next steps is to open a showroom in Italy, most probably in the town of Lucca in the Toscana Region which is considered the center of tissue paper processing in Europe.

- The next step would be to establish a sister company in Italy, in the City of Bologna, which is deemed the global center of the packaging industry, and is also called Packaging Valley.

Stax is one of the few companies exporting 99 percent of production, which is why we've asked the sales director to tell us something about the obstacles faced by Serbian exporters.

- Our opinion, based on our previous experience, is that the biggest problem of export companies is a failure to find adequate subcontractors in the local market that are ready to follow us every step of the way.