Nearly four years ago, MPS announced a strategic growth plan of strengthening its North American presence by expanding its sales, marketing, installation, service and assembly operations. For me, this plan included a move to the United States from the Netherlands to help lead the effort.

A lot transpired over the last four years, and I’m pleased to share with you the exciting evolvement of MPS Systems North America and how it has benefited our North American customers.

“Mr. Flexo” Denny McGee
Over the years, Denny McGee has built a solid reputation for MPS throughout the American market. The FTA Hall of Fame Inductee is a key advocator of flexo, with an unrivaled network from his remarkable journey beginning in the early 1970s.

2014 was the beginning of significant changes to the structure of MPS North America that would reinforce Denny’s hard groundwork.

At the forefront: Service
A necessary change to make bold growth in North America was implementing a fully-operational local service infrastructure, as fast response is vital to a printer. 

In a few years, MPS Systems North America has built a solid customer service organization with its hub in Green Bay, WI, that provides a team of US-based field service engineers for the installation and after-sale service of presses, local stock and production of spare parts, and remote-control diagnostics.

Local assembly
Printers in North America soon had the added benefit of having their presses assembled in the United States when MPS started a strategic partnership with EMT International, a premier manufacturer of quality printing equipment. Together, EMT and MPS provide highly customized solutions reflecting the needs of the North American market. Important built-in features, such as full press automation, a user-friendly operator interface and a unique web path technology, are all aimed to increase productivity and user-friendliness of the press.

A few examples of how our product offering adapted to the North American market are the choice of either plate rolls or print sleeves and the Chameleon RobustCut side load die station (launched together with EMT).

Widening sales and marketing reach
The MPS North American sales force was enforced geographically across the US and Canada, with the addition of talented area sales managers and local partners. The creation of this extensive network provides printers with easy access to expert technical sales consultants that can advise on the best press configuration for their production environment.

Complementing the MPS sales strength is the opening of a state-of-the-art North American Demo & Applications Technology Center together with Green Bay Packaging. The heart of this center is a fully-automated, user-friendly EF multi-substrate flexo press, which is a future proof platform that raises the bar in productivity, flexo print quality and flexible converting.

Printers are invited to visit the center and see live demonstrations of this 10-color, 17″ press that is equipped with UV/LED, hot air dryers and a large number of different converting options. To see live footage of this EF press, click here to learn more about the Flexo Innovation Open House in October 2017.

We’ve also increased our local marketing efforts and opportunities to personally interact with printers through our industry association partnerships with TLMI and FTA, and key events such as our own hosted open houses and Labelexpo Americas. These events also provide the opportunity to show how our collaboration efforts with key industry suppliers benefit printers throughout the entire print process.

Fruit of our efforts
The last four years have shown considerable expansion for the North American operation of MPS — and the efforts of the entire team have proven very fruitful.

We’ve experienced an accelerated sales growth with many exciting printers in the North American market investing in MPS equipment. Supporting this sales momentum is our highly responsive service organization that reaches out across the continent.

Our new Demo & Applications Technology Center and further expansion of the service and sales team will pave the way for continued growth. We’ll also continue responding to specific technology needs of the American printers and partner with local partners such as Green Bay Packaging, EMT, Domino and Kodak.

Our top priority? To continue delivering high-end presses that are simple to operate. And that’s a worldwide commitment.

About the author: Kees Nijenhuis is vice president of MPS Systems North America, and he’s based in Green Bay WI, USA.