The HERMA Group, headquartered in Germany, and Wausau Coated Products (WCP) have announced a strategic partnership to enhance their offerings in the self-adhesive materials market. This collaboration brings together two family-owned companies with complementary product portfolios and market orientations, aiming to provide high added value to existing and future customers in Europe and America.

Notably, there is no merger or mutual equity participation between the companies, ensuring that they remain independent in their operations and decision-making.

“Our two companies complement each other perfectly in terms of their product portfolios and market development to date,” says Ben Reif, president and CEO, WCP. “For example, the multi-layer technology perfected by HERMA allows the use of standard self- adhesive materials in an impressive way, even for demanding applications.”

Guido Spachtholz, HERMA managing director, adds, “When it comes to self-adhesive materials for unusual specialty labels, especially for wine, spirits and beverages. WCP is a preferred development partner for label printers and users far beyond America.”

The partnership will initially focus on marketing defined products under the brand name of the respective manufacturer. WCP will distribute various HERMA self-adhesive materials in the Mexican market, where HERMA has not been active to date. WCP, which has been operating a slitting facility in Mexico for years, will present HERMA products for the first time at Labelexpo Mexico in Guadalajara in April.

“With HERMA’s self-adhesive material, we can offer our numerous customers in Mexico even better solutions from a single source and emphasize our competence as a problem solver, even for high-volume applications,” explains Dave Rosen, chief growth officer at WCP.

In return, HERMA will distribute WCP specialty materials for spirits and wine labels in selected European markets, starting in the UK. “This is a very attractive and dynamically developing market. For capacity reasons, we have only been able to exploit its potential to a limited extent so far. Now we can perfectly serve it and offer interesting and innovative solutions,” explains Harald Wallner, HERMA director of sales, international.

These are, for example, very high-quality structured papers, which are very popular with British whiskey and gin producers. To ensure short delivery times, the British subsidiary HERMA UK, which operates its own slitting center in Newbury, will initially rely on WCP products.

Both companies emphasize that they are not aiming for any kind of corporate relationship or mutual equity participation. “Both WCP and HERMA are family-owned. That is our shared DNA. We don’t want to change that,” says Rosen.

Heiko Henninger, HERMA director of corporate development and legal, adds, “With this collaboration we combine each partner’s individual and complementing strengths and open up the opportunity for synergetic growth across continents while staying independent. This offers our customers greater value and choice in consolidating markets.”

Spachtholz remarks, “The owners, in both cases, are known for taking a very long- term and forward-looking approach. Stable and reliable partnerships have therefore always been an important basis for the development of our companies. The shared spirit, the hands-on mentality and the absolute customer focus of both companies make for a perfect match. We are very much looking forward to what lies ahead.”