NEWSLETTER Q1/2019


Making 2019 a Landmark Year

 

Jan Franz Allerkamp, CEO

After we have successfully moved our entire team into the new building, I’m very excited to announce that Dario Urbinati will round out the executive team of ACTEGA Metal Print as the new Chief Sales & Marketing Officer (CSMO). Dario brings 12 years of narrow web and packaging experience with Gallus and Omet where he helped build-up new product platforms and developed new channels for sales, service and distribution. Dario is the perfect CSMO and will help us strike the right balance between R&D and Sales & Marketing. Dario comes with a lot of persistence, creativity and the enthusiasm of a high-class sales manager who will complement our small, currently R&D-driven company very well and ensure that we deliver products that are needed by our customers. His experience as a regional Managing Director for Gallus and Omet is exactly what we need as we build our business, e.g. finding the right (regional) sales channels. 2018 was a year of engaging the market and hard work. We built relationships, learned the needs of the market and explored the wide capabilities of the ECOLEAF technology. We made significant progress with the chemistry of our beautiful metallic pigments and the testing of our flexo- and screen-printed trigger images on Gallus and Omet presses. A lot of time was invested in repeatability and developing the setup expertise and best practices that will be used by our future customers. Our key challenge for 2019 is to define the first ECOLEAF product and get it ready for market — and Dario is the right man at the right time.

5 Questions with Dario Urbinati, CMSO


Dario Urbinati has 12 years’ experience in the print industry, most recently serving as the Managing Director of Omet Asia Pacific where he was responsible for the turnaround of the business in China, including the expansion of the distribution and sales channels. Prior to Omet, Dario was the Managing Director of Gallus in Southeast Asia where he led and expanded direct and indirect sales and service activities. He grew sales across multiple product lines throughout the region and was responsible for a P&L that included equipment, consumables and services. Now with ACTEGA Metal Print, Dario will be based in the Lehrte office and commute to work from Switzerland—when he’s not visiting customers or partners.

Why did you decide to join AMP?
I joined AMP because I was very impressed with the R&D drive and the startup attitude of the company. For me, this is an amazing opportunity to participate in a revolutionary change of technology in the print industry. The company offers a fantastic synthesis of Landa’s Israeli culture of innovation and ALTANA’s German culture of service- and perfection-driven solutions. As a startup inside the wider ALTANA organization, AMP adds new DNA to the larger ecosystem and will lead to the creation of fantastic, innovative products. Right from beginning I knew that I had made the right decision. There was a “click” with the team and I was made to feel welcome. Also in my meetings with Benny Landa and his team, I joined as an outsider with specific narrow web and packaging experience and with different perspectives. There was no resistance to sharing my ideas. This type of openness is simply exceptional; it showed an ability to look “outside the box” or beyond your frame of reference and work together. This is how great things are achieved.

What do you want to achieve in 2019 at ACTEGA Metal Print?
In 2019, I help to define, design, and release the initial ECOLEAF products that will enable digital metallization. We are in the exciting phase of turning an R&D project into a company operating in the markets. Meeting our goals for 2019 will enable us to launch our first commercially available product at Drupa 2020. Meanwhile we are working on the fundamentals in branding, value proposition, final technical adjustments and work with partners to be ready with our beta launch towards the end of 2019.

What characteristic or personality traits do you bring to your new job?
I bring creativity and appreciation for artistry to my new job, a solid technical understanding, quite a bit experience in our industry, and a grounded economic acumen. These characteristics help me with problem-solving relating to our customers in the metallic ink and substrate markets as well as in hot and cold foil. Our ECOLEAF technology offers a real breakthrough in the economics for printing metallic embellishments and we have specific ideas on how our products will be used by our customers. If there’s one thing I have learned about printers, it is that they are very artistic and will use technology and tools in ways that vendors never imagined. Printers are artists and they come up with creative solutions for overcoming their challenges. By understanding them, we have the privilege of providing tools and technologies that will lead to amazing products.

What is your educational and professional background and how does it help with your challenges of AMP?
I have a degree in electrics, significant understanding of mechanics and printing and packaging and an executive MBA from Hochschule St. Gallen (HSG), where I participated in a unique joint program with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, which led to another Masters degree from that Institution in international Business Administration. Afterwards I obtained a Harvard Certificate in Fintech, which helps me to implement our Digital Business Model with ECOLEAF. The Master’s program took me to universities in countries like Brazil, Hungary, Canada, Switzerland, India and China, where I learned how to establish, administer and grow business in other cultures, with an emphasis on in-cultural training and the legal aspects of various markets. On the professional side, I have more than a decade of experience in building sales channels in the printing industry for equipment, consumables and services on five continents. In addition, my experience in having responsibility for the P&L of a larger Sales Region has many similarities to AMP’s position inside the ACTEGA/ALTANA group.

What type of hobbies do you enjoy in your spare time—if you have any?
My favorite hobby is mountaineering; I’m Swiss after all and mountaineering is second nature to many of us. This includes skiing, trekking and climbing. I don’t mind sleeping in a tent on a peak at minus 20 degrees, as long as I have the equipment in place, of course. My hobby has taken me to amazing mountain ranges and places like the Himalayas, Borneo, Japan and of course all over Europe. But the wish list is still long and includes the famous Matterhorn, Elbrus and the Aconcagua. My sedate interests include boxing — which I have done for almost two decades — and reading. My favorite authors include Umberto Eco and Dan Brown, but nobody beats Paulo Coelho.

On the Road Again

 

Jan Franz Allerkamp, CEO

Our trips to potential customers and partners recently took us to England where we met with A B Graphic International, the leading provider of finishing and embellishment equipment in the self-adhesive label industry. The technology of the company is suited to serve as a perfect platform to bring ECOLEAF to the digital label printing world. By deploying ECOLEAF, ABG will be able to further leverage its 60 years of experience in manufacturing innovative equipment. During the visit, we discussed methods for integrating the ECOLEAF solution into ABG equipment and how flexo and screen printing can be used for generating the trigger image. We also shared ideas on a joint market approach that could be structured to offer customers the best possible solution in terms of product and service. We concluded our meeting by agreeing that ABG will ship finishing line equipment to AMP’s Lehrte site in May for testing.

Jan Franz Allerkamp (AMP CEO) and Matthew Burton (ABG Sales Director)

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