Herbert Hahnenkamp, General Manager for the GSA Region at SACMI Packaging & Chocolate, talks about the history of SACMI and the ambitious goals that he wants to achieve in the next five years, and how he wants to reach SMEs in particular.
By Hans Strohmaier
Herbert Hahnenkamp has been the new General Manager of Business Development at SACMI Packaging & Chocolate in the German-language regions since January of this year, assisted by Simone Seitz. Originally from Vienna, Mr Hahnenkamp and his sales and service team are determined to move the Italian brands forward again in the coming years.
sweets processing: Mr Hahnenkamp, in contrast to your former employer, the global conglomerate Ishida, SACMI Packaging & Chocolate seems somewhat less well-known in this part of the world. But I suppose appearances can be deceiving.
Herbert Hahnenkamp: Absolutely. It’s true that at the moment this new business unit, established in 2018, is not yet firmly anchored in people’s minds. But if we mention the individual SACMI Packaging & Chocolate brands, namely Carle & Montanari in the chocolate production sector, and OPM in the packaging sector, then true experts immediately understand the significance of our business segment. These great names in Italian mechanical engineering for confectionery and food products have long profited from the company’s integration into the strong SACMI concern.
SACMI was founded 100 years ago by a group of engineers in Imola/Italy. Today, SACMI has 80 subsidiaries around the world and is the clear market leader for machinery and presses for ceramics manufacturers. Four of these subsidiary operations are located in Germany alone. The group has a staff of some 4,500 employees and annual revenues exceeding 1.4 billion Euros. Chocolate and packaging are responsible for generating around ten percent of total revenues.
sp: How did the conglomerate make its way into the chocolate and confectionery segment in the first place?
Herbert Hahnenkamp: SACMI was already involved in the food products industry with its systems for the beverages industry when the opportunity came up in 2001 to take over the renowned tradition-rich company Carle & Montanari (C & M). C & M was founded in 1907 by Enrico Carle. Over the course of its history, the company has supplied over 1,000 systems around the world and is one of the top three mechanical engineering operations in the chocolate segment. With the merger of Carle & Montanari Wrapping Systems and FIMA in the winding machinery sector, along with the takeover of OPM in 2012, SACMI also acquired an immense amount of expertise in the entire field of confectionery packaging.
Remember that OPM was founded in 1978 in Alba/Italy, and by the time of the takeover the company had amassed enormous know-how with its special solutions and applications for primary and secondary packaging for chocolate products. In 2018, the SACMI Packaging & Chocolate business unit headquartered in Imola emerged as a result.
sp: So can SACMI Packaging & Chocolate provide everything needed for chocolate production from a single source?
Herbert Hahnenkamp: Yes, exactly. Today, we’re the only company in the world that can supply chocolate industry companies with machinery and complete lines for the entire process – from raw cocoa mass all the way through to pallets. Together with our customers, we’re always striving to develop and implement the best machinery for mixing, refining, conching, tempering, moulding, wrapping and packaging every kind of chocolate-based product. Our portfolio also includes tubular bag machinery, flow packaging and solutions for secondary packaging. Today, SACMI Packaging & Chocolate has three factories: one for moulding systems from C & M in Milan, one for primary and secondary systems located in Alba, and one for all kinds of winding machinery near the city of Bologna. At the moment, we’re also adding a fourth business unit with carton erector machinery for trays and single carton packaging.
sp: But the SACMI name is still relatively unknown in the sweets industry in the German-language regions.
Herbert Hahnenkamp: You’re right about that. That’s why one of our priorities here at the beginning is to rebuild the brand name, an effort we’re undertaking with a specialized agency. Our systems are in use at all the large conglomerates. For instance, every bar of an especially well-known chocolate brand worldwide is produced using one of our systems. But not many people know this. So, we now have our own team for Germany, Switzerland and Austria known as D-A-CH, that is determined to change this. Our unique portfolio of solutions and the enormously concentrated focus on our customers’ needs form an outstanding basis to intensify our sales and marketing activities in the German-language regions.
sp: What target group are you addressing, and what targets have you set for yourself?
Herbert Hahnenkamp: Our target group consists mainly of chocolate and confectionery manufacturers, as well as industrial bakeries. In contrast, in the packaging segment our sphere of activity is more tightly defined. For instance, in this environment we also service customers that package infusion bags with our machinery. We came up with a five-year plan with the decision-makers at the parent company in Imola. During this time we primarily want to significantly increase our market coverage. In the past five years, SACMI generated a total of 42 million Euros in GSA revenues, with only 18 customers. Now, in the first step of our plan, we’ve come up with a list of approximately 1,500 potential customers that we want to contact.
sp: Is GSA the SACMI Packaging & Chocolate company‘s first in-house sales enterprise?
Herbert Hahnenkamp: No, two and a half years ago, SACMI USA Inc. made its debut, and in the meantime, its team of 30 people has an impressive record of success. In Europe, SACMI Polska was the first in-house sales company, and it now also has a team of 30 persons. So, the decision was reached to expand SACMI Swiss into the in-house sales company D-A-CH. We’ve started off with13 employees, four in sales and nine in service and engineering. In five years, we want to have achieved annual revenue of around 25 million Euros.
sp: What has your experience been like in these first few months? And what’s your take on the current investment climate in the confectionery sector?
Herbert Hahnenkamp: We observed great insecurity dominating the market through the middle of 2020. So, companies were initially very cautious. But then we saw that consumer demand for confectionery, baked goods and savoury snacks was enjoying strong growth. In the second half of 2020, we received numerous inquiries and the first orders. We’re seeing that high investment sums are being made available. And this is exactly the phase when they need to be. We can score points in this regard with our immense expertise and our special solutions. Of course, all of our biggest competitors do their production in Germany. That’s a challenge we have to face, and we’re looking forward to tackling it.
At the same time, there is pressure to continue expanding automation, even at smaller and mid-sized operations. SMEs also will and are eager to reequip their operations; so, it’s not necessarily a company’s size that is the decisive factor. Mid-sized companies have to look beyond the horizon and figure aspects like price-per-pack into their investment decisions. Our background with the conglomerate is of course a big help in this respect. SACMI has 380 cooperative members, and the conglomerate’s executive is required to only pay out ten percent in returns. The rest has to be reinvested. So we have a range of other possibilities regarding things like intelligent financing considerations, and whether and where we can make advance payments.
sp: What are the decisive factors in the contact with mid-sized companies?
Herbert Hahnenkamp: Even for medium-sized companies, efficiency today means that the systems and machinery are running around the clock and are as flexible as possible. For example, remote maintenance is a very important point. The after-sales segment generally plays an increasingly bigger role in mechanical engineering, because no one can afford a longer production standstill anymore.
Our structure is designed to meet this need. SMEs generally have higher consultation expenditures, so regionality and being nearby are very important. This means that Simone Seitz supervises the markets in Germany and Switzerland, and I will look after the customers in Austria. Soon, in addition to our headquarters in the Swiss town of Neuhausen am Rheinfall, we’ll be setting up a second location in Schwäbisch Hall/Germany in order to provide customer service even faster and more efficiently. With this, we’re signalling that we’re close by, we speak your language! And we take our responsibility seriously.
sp: What can you offer SMEs?
Herbert Hahnenkamp: Often, when people think of us they only associate us with major conglomerates. But our product portfolio also includes processing and chocolate mould system machinery sizes as small as 400 to 600 kilograms for this sector. We’ve undergone massive further development here and redeveloped numerous products that are ideal for SMEs, especially for companies that want to start producing their own chocolate themselves again from the bean, a visible trend on today’s market.
Additionally, in the last three years SACMI has invested over 150 million Euros into research and development, including training and education for our own employees. After all, a company can only grow with professional, well-trained employees. Our focus is on fundamental technologies and Industry 4.0, along with advanced materials. This is an enormous help with things such as the paper foils sector. At the moment, paper foils are one of the hottest topics for us. This is where we see the biggest innovation opportunities.
sp: And nutrition trends are also changing.
Herbert Hahnenkamp: We‘re paying attention to that as well. Our product development hasn’t stopped in its tracks. We can see that the consumption of solid products has been declining for some time. The trend is moving toward fillings, positively perceived ingredients, inclusions and exclusions, and we can do all of this with our machinery.
sp: We also observe increasing pressure on manufacturers from public debate on sustainability, climate protection and fairness. Does this also affect you?
Herbert Hahnenkamp: Of course. Energy efficiency and CO2 reduction have been issues for a long time. Nowadays, every large company puts together sustainability reports. But it is difficult nowadays to compare mechanical systems on the basis of energy. This information is already included in our offer preparation these days. We have to show what measures we’ve taken in this area. As I mentioned, at the moment fibre-based tubular bags are big agenda items for our customers and in the commercial sector. We, like other suppliers, already have a tubular bag machine for paper bags in our portfolio. The challenge with this is that everyone wants to use paper, but they also want the machinery to run at the same speed as it does for plastic bags. If public attention continues to focus on this point, even sweets manufacturers will be confronted with this problem soon.
