The company recently opened a branch office in San Paolo, Brazil, to better service the growing market.
Automated secondary packaging
Speaking from Pack Expo 2014 in Chicago, Paolo Borgna, area sales manager for Carle&Montanari-OPM said of Brazil: “Until now secondary packaging was done manually so today they are starting with new automatic solutions.”
“We are expecting big growth in secondary packaging solutions, so robotic packaging. We are continuing to sell big numbers of wrappers so paper and aluminium wrapper for confectionery products.”
Shelf-ready and product protection
He added that Brazilian confectioners were increasingly interested in self-ready packaging, so products could be displayed within retailers cost effectively and still catch the consumers’ eye.
“Another point that is becoming more important is the protection of the product both from animal contamination and to protect it from transport damage in a country where transportation is not really easy.”
Oscar Brune, managing director of the Brazil office, added: “In Brazil some products need to be transported more than 4,000 km, really long distances.”
Brazilian office
Borgna said that Carle&Montanari-OPM sales in Brazil had risen to €10-13m annually in the past few years. “This kind of volume started to justify the presence of a more important service team.”
The company will have a service operator in the country by the end of the year to help customers.
“Our decision was that we start the operation with Brazil, which is representing 70% of our volumes in South America,” said Borgna.
The company is considering extending support to other Latin American countries in future, but will begin in Brazil.
“The idea is to start step-by-step. Brazil is at the moment the strongest in the area. We need more help in Brazil, especially in after sales with spare parts and service,” said Brune.