Founded in 1996, MPS Systems is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. The company’s history began 25 years ago when Bert van den Brink and Eric Hoendervangers, two former employees of Stork (SPG prints today), started their own business to develop an improved flexo press. Together with Henk Wientjens, also a former Stork colleague, they founded Multi Print Systems.

The MPS founders were pioneers in the world of narrow web flexo printing, inventing the first servo-driven flexo press. In 1997, the trio sold their first machine to a Swedish printing house, and this very first press is still running production today.

While the company grew and professionalized over the years, it maintained high quality and innovation as its core values today. Van den Brink says, “Innovation is in our DNA. It used to be about finding the best technologies, now it’s about continuous improvement. We’ll never stop improving our unparalleled solutions.”

Wientjes, who was head of R&D since its inception, retired in 2019. Hoendervangers and van den Brink are currently in advisory roles and stepping back from daily operations as of January 2022. They are still highly valued within the company. Atze Bosma, CEO of MPS, comments, “We are extremely grateful for our founding fathers, especially for their efforts they took to get MPS where we are today. Without them, we would never have had such a beautiful, successful company with the best quality products.”

MPS began in a small garage in 1996, moved in 1997 to a larger location in Nijmegen, and had the opportunity in 1999 to take over the Sloka machine factory in Didam. The Sloka employees were welcomed into the MPS family, and today, a few current employees have a combined work history extending 25 years. Van den Brink adds, “It’s an honor to still have such a loyal group of employees with us from the very start.”

Over the years, MPS has expanded to locations in Germany, the UK, North America and Asia. Together with a vast network of agents, MPS sells and services presses around the world. Hoendervangers, the commercial force within the founding trio, states, “Having over 800 of our machines running production across the globe is more than we could have ever dreamt back in 1996. I’m proud of where we are today, and I trust our ‘baby’ to be in good hands with our current board: Atze Bosma as CEO and Michiel Borst as CFO. I look forward to seeing our company grow even bigger and more successful in the future.”

In June of this year, MPS launched its new branding and message: Connect to Grow. Bosma says, “Having an MPS press means you have a golden tool to be extremely productive and efficient as a company. But in practice, we see machines not being used to their full potential. To change this, we’re showing our customers how to improve by giving them access to unbiased, factual data coming from the printing press.

“Our customers can choose to have advice from our expert team of data analysts and print managers, so they can learn how to improve their press productivity; for example, in shortening changeover times and lowering waste,” he adds.

MPS’ silver jubilee year will begin with a celebration on the official anniversary date of November 1, where the company will have an internal celebration with employees and the three founding fathers.

Bosma concludes, “We’re excited to kick off an anniversary year with big and smaller events, together with our employees, customers, suppliers and the industry.”