In an effort to promote growth, MPS Systems has appointed Richard Miedema to the position of global sales director. With many years in the industry, Miedema boasts a strong track record and a deep understanding of the MPS product range and organization.

Miedema’s extensive experience within MPS, particularly in leading sales operations across EMEA and overseeing the German-speaking regions, made him the ideal candidate for this role. Miedema recently toured the United States as MPS is emphasizing growth in the region. To learn more about MPS’ future plans, L&NW sat down with Miedema.

L&NW: What are MPS’ plans for North America, both in the short and long-term future?
RM: Over the past few years, the market in North America has transformed and consolidated quite heavily. This being a global trend, we at MPS are constantly adapting our organization so that we can better serve these changing markets. We are seeing that converters are forming larger groups with multiple locations with a more corporate structure.

We at MPS are investing heavily in professionalizing our organization to meet the increasing demands of these larger groups. Little over a year ago we moved into our new US-based facility in Newtown, PA, which serves as service hub for our North American customers. Together with our Asian service hub and our headquarters in the Netherlands, we cover round the clock remote support capability for MPS partners running 24/7.

We are currently building our sales organization in North America, leading to the appointments of Jason Schmitt, who covers the East Coast for MPS and the cooperation with Impressions Worldwide, our sales partner for the West Coast. With this solid foundation and support structure, we will further build our American presence.

L&NW: What made you the right person for this role, and what are your first initiatives for MPS?
RM: In my new role, my primary focus is to initiate meaningful conversations with our customer base and key corporate accounts. By actively listening to their needs, I’m committed to ensure that MPS Systems is not just a press supplier but a long-term partner that supports their success.

Additionally, I’m excited about the recent appointments of Jason Schmitt, who is covering the East Coast for MPS Systems, and our partnership with Impressions Worldwide, our sales and service partner for the West Coast. These strategic moves strengthen our presence and enable us to better serve our customers nationwide.

L&NW: What are your impressions of the North American flexo market, and what opportunities do you see for MPS?
RM: The North American flexo market, and the narrow web market in particular, has been consolidating over the past years. Noticeably, the consolidation has slowed down a little bit following the challenging 2023, where many converters have seen their sales drop. As these groups grow bigger, we see that they are analyzing their asset base and, in some cases, rationalizing plants or consolidating into larger plants. There is more focus on efficiency, and we see more and more converters looking at wider presses than the traditional 10” or 13” flexo presses.

L&NW: How has MPS evolved as a company in recent years?
RM: MPS only celebrated its 27th anniversary this year, meaning that we are still a relatively young company in the narrow web industry and probably the youngest company building flexo printing presses in the narrow web segment. Just last year, we installed our 1,000th printing press, meaning that we have successfully gained a market share over the years to become one of the leading flexo press manufacturers in the world.

The fact that we have grown so rapidly, and now have such a significant install base, has led to a new phase of our company where we invest heavily in our service department that now provides local service with service engineers from our offices in the USA, Malaysia and from our headquarters in the Netherlands with 24/7 remote support. We actively promote 5-year warranty programs on new equipment and offer application and production support to our customers as part of our Performance Programs.

L&NW: What technologies does MPS offer that make the company the ideal partner for North American label converters?
RM: MPS manufactures flexo equipment at the highest automation level in the market. In the last few years, we have been investing heavily into connectivity, analyzing production data and press utilization, and most importantly analyzing operator behavior. Across the globe, and without exception, we see huge potential to increase productivity on existing presses. We analyze change-over workflow and setup procedures and help customers by supporting their continuous improvement efforts to increase their output per press significantly.

We support our customers in several ways through MPSConnect: First, we give access to dashboards with key production metrics to show the performance of the equipment. Second, we have the ability to benchmark these metrics with other MPS users anonymously. We also have the ability to track operator behavior and define and offer tailor-made training programs and E-Learnings. MPS also offers real-time coaching of the operator through our Virtual Coach that works as a GPS for press operators to steer operator behavior towards best practices and standard operating procedures.