From: ItaliaImballaggio

Italian competitivity

Strongpoint: plastic converters from the outset with a design and development service capable of translating ideas into packaging solutions, exploiting the possibilities offered by the most varied technologies as befitting the occasion.

And on top of that, being able to count on a first rate production potential, in turn strategically integrated with the activity of mould construction and robots serving the working units.
Finally, certainly not to be disparaged, the ability to develop the business of a company with strong family basis in a market evermore conditioned by the purchasing logic of the multinationals.
Even if only faintly sketched out, these are the features behind the success of the Piber Group of Voghera (PV). Producer of primary plastic packaging for the food sector, first and foremost to the icecream and dairy industry, the Group now supplies the home detergency and personal care sector: from “simple” tubs - injection moulded or heatformed - to more technical or barrier-type containers, at any rate decorated and labeled to great effect.

Ideas and shapes
Yet how big and why? We asked Dottor Marco Bergaglio, commercial head of the Piber Group. «Today we are a holding that groups together 5 companies with the same amount of production works (see box) covering 700 employees and a turnover for the year 2000 of over 110 billion lire. Annually we convert 15,000 t of plastic material - 70% of which polypropylene - on 125 production lines. With these figures we can declare ourselves sector leaders in Italy in terms of volumes and production capacity, but our true plus point is that we are able to recreate a container from start to finish, offering the customer a range of solutions, or, alternatively, turn an idea into something that is technically feasible, all the while faithfully respecting the indications laid down by marketing.
This focusing on service derives from the fact that we are integrated producers, which means that not only do we see to producing the articles, we also create the moulds, manipulators, presses and packaging machines, and we see to the bonding and heatsealing in line of the containers. Thanks precisely to the knowhow of our technical office, to our installed production potential, to the efficiency of our quality system - ISO 9002 certified for four years now - we are competitive in offering innovation, a complete range of products and reduced time to market».

Always searching for something new
The Piber Group has always excelled in its capacity to offer diversified packaging solutions, thus bearing witness to the evolution of production and decoration technologies for plastic containers. One only has to think of the widespread use of IML moulding (in mould labeling) also in its most recent application with transparent labels.
«Technically impossible up to a few years ago - Bergaglio goes on to say - we have now managed to obtain interesting results on nearly all traditional forms. The print quality that we have attained working on transparent supports is excellent, also being stackproof on the outside. In order to attain these objectives we have had to modify the mould method and devise shapes that are more befitting to the performance of PP labels. In the same vein, another decoration technique that has enjoyed a lot of success in the last few years is what we call Trasdeco. It is a procedure of heat transfer of labels onto cone and cylinder shapes, that allow you to obtain the same quality as in IML, hence a high level four colour process, excellent coverage also on transparent mediums, at costs below IML on medium to long runs». On the subject of performance, such staggering changes have not been seen in latter years. For example, as opposed to what is happening with flexible packaging, the demand for barrier material for stiff plastic containers has remained stable, limited to the spread of fresh or ultrafresh products. Here permeability of the packaging material is of little importance.
Not for this are interesting developments lacking, as Bergaglio states. «We have recently gained experience in the butter sector, obtaining good results with injection-moulded tubs combined with IML labels that offer total barrier to light. We are also making a new, interesting IML container with high oxygen barrier for packaging potato chips. In other words, when necessary we can supply containers that once sealed have protection characteristics that are above those of a heatformed containers made in barrier material.
Now another alternative has been added and it is that of composite containers in plastic/cardboard that act as a barrier to light, gas and humidity, and that are perfectly stiff, closable and machineable».

Quality integration
The decisive factor behind this proliferation of proposals is without a doubt technological process innovation. «As part of our vocation - Bergaglio clarifies - we have always paid close attention to new technologies and the most sophisticated means of production. Currently we have over 125 lines installed in our works, constituted by injection presses and heatformers on which we “rotate” around 1,500 different articles a year, using a mould range now touching on 3,500 units that undergo constant servicing; we also have thirty decoration lines. What is more, right now we are seeing to substituting most of our machines, given the evolution these machines have undergone in recent times».
This attention paid to the means cannot make us forget that the moulds are still the real technological heart of the polymer conversion process. In this vein the group can count on the knowhow of one of its companies (H.M.S.) that, with forty or so employees and a design office with six CAD station, deals with the design and construction of the moulds as well as the robots for loading the IML labels and the pick-up/stacking of the finished pieces.
«We have been using sophisticated manipulators for automating press-moulding operations of IML containers for 10 years and have been using them for subsequent stacking operation for at least 5, aboveall at the outfeed of the injection presses. This for two reasons: on the one hand in order to contain costs, or at any rate to maximise the efficiency at production level, and on the other in order to guarantee a better quality article. In fact very often automatic stacking can lead to the drastic reduction of average microbiological pollution this even to a thousandfold. Hence we dedicate maximum attention to this risk factor, aboveall in consideration of the growing needs deriving for example from the spread of biological products without preservatives, based on the chain of fresh produce in modified atmosphere».
In order to further improve quality standards, Piber is also equipping its own robots with label presence and graphic recognition control systems. «The objective is to offer the customer even greater safety, guaranteeing the stracciatella icecream is not mistakenly packed in a nougat icecream container. And this is of fundamental importance if we consider production for special diets, where an error of this sort could place the consumer’s health at risk».

The long journey of the tub
From simple tubs to technical container, the Piber Group hence appears capable of supplying a complete range of solutions, this covering its market of choice, that of icecreams and frozen foods - that on its own is worth around 50% of the turnover - as well as the dairy market (35%).
The Voghera-based company also operates in the socalled “fats” sector (mayonnaise, sauces, condiments, etc.) and catering (disposable tableware) and it has recently entered into the housecare sector with an IML tub for wet wipes with a snap-shut top and a high service content.
«Our strategy - Bergaglio states - is to find new users outside the food sector, a market by now showing zero growth for years, or in new areas of the Mediterranean such as Greece, Israel or Tunisia.
Unfortunately our containers are difficult to export due to their poor volume/turnover ratio; and this is why exports to Europe only account for 15% of sales. For the same reasons we have obtained the most interesting results in niche applications, where competitors capable of doing special things are few and far between. We are what is more consolidating the good flows towards South America where among other things, specifically in Chile, we have a cooperation agreement with a local producer to whom we supply moulds and technology».

Programming the unforseeable
Considering the food market, we cannot but at this point comment on the consequences of Italian national policy, that has in fact favoured the development of foreign groups.
«On top of everything - Bergaglio tells us - packaging producers have to face up to multinational groups that what is more culturally tend to favour north European suppliers against Mediterranean ones, this at times quite outside any rationale of cost-effectiveness.
To this one must add the growth of the private labels of broadscale distribution, that are introducing different modes of purchase, that on the whole seem to show less “awareness” of problems and the times needed to program production. Given this situation in the future we shall see a differentiation of packaging producers that, on the one hand, as in our case, will have to grow in size to be able to dialogue with the large groups and, on the other, will have to aim at the flexibly perhaps fielding more limited production structures so as to better serve the own brand suppliers. The risk seems for all, that of seeing the installed productive capacity grow, so as to be able to face evermore uncontrolled peaks of demand, that aboveall in the case of icecream, tend to be concentrated in just a few months of the year. In doing so though, beyond emergencies, one has the problem of the correct usage of the systems. The challenge hence, is how to handle the structural changes of the market while staying competitive. We have made our choices».


Family group...
With Piberplast - founded in 1960 and focussed on injection moulding of plastic containers for food and pharmaceuticals - Piero Bergaglio started up a success story that bears the marks of a certain very Italian way of living in and for the company: intuitive in the choices of the moment and the mode of expansion, but never recklessly adventurous; traditional in wishing to stay true to the principles of a quality offer, but open to change and to the logic of an evolving market.
Deeply rooted on Lombard territory (and more precisely in the typically “Padanian” Voghera, PV) starting off from 1976 the Bergaglio family began to diversify its activites, that led to the creation of H.M.S., technological heart of the group and entrusted with the design and the construction of the moulds, as well as the construction of the heatsealing machines.
Esbe Italiana was created in 1982, that immediately took on a driving role in the heatforming of rotogravure preprinted containers, followed in 1983 by Piber Group (service company for sales and marketing, administration and finance) and Stamplast, specialised in injection moulding.
With Alipack, that in 1990 took over the construction of heatsealing machines from H.M.S. and packaging machines for food and beverage, the Piber Group took on its current form: a diversified concern operating internationally, this thanks to its confirmed capacity to offer products and services, strategic partner of largescale producers and multinationals.
And as the son of the founder Dottor Marco Bergaglio has had the chance to underline: «Our plus point is that, even though we are a medium-sized company, we are still a family concern. For this reason we can boast an attention to details and a flexibility that allows us to be extremely competitive. In other terms we have a careful and personalised management, operating mid- to longterm. An example? Our having built our production units on very extensive areas that allow us to prospect doubling or tripling our surface area. On the other hand, on average, our company invests annually over 10% of its turnover in new technologies and, as a practise, where possible we hit our payback period ahead of time».
A way of working, this, that seems to confirm the tendency of Italian entrepreneurs to not look to immediate gain, but at prospective turnover, with an emotional participation that one normally only reserves for ones own creations.
«Even though this side of things, things being what they are now, does not stand as a plus point that one can spend in ones relations with the big international names, where what counts most is what you can propose up front, attention to service and the quality of ones offer, it can stand as an advantage at the medium-sized company level. In this case, the person we are dialoguing with, even if not perhaps the owner but a manager, has direct authority over a number of functions. And hence a global approach like our own, that goes from designing the packaging to production to the supply of machines and marketing consultancy, can be of valid help» Bergaglio concludes