Flint Group realigns organization

Flint Group has implemented a new organizational structure aimed at enabling customers to have full access to Flint Group’s product portfolio through a single sales contact, supported by in-depth technical support.

This will align the organization to market segments and customer applications enabling Flint Group to provide significant advantages to customers, says the company.

Product lines serving the print media market for production of newspapers, inserts, magazines, catalogues, direct mail, stationery, forms and so on have now been integrated to form the regionalized Print Media divisions, Print Media Europe and Print Media North America.

Charles Knott, CEO of Flint Group said: ‘Our business units can now offer the full range of products and services demanded by the print media market comprising coldset inks, newspaper flexo inks, heatset inks, publication gravure inks, sheetfed inks as well as press room chemicals, printing blankets and sleeves for all offset printing processes.

‘We want to make doing business with us easier and more efficient for our print media customers by offering a main contact person at Flint Group to cover the total range of products and services for their business.’

Dermot Healy, vice president Day International Europe, has been appointed president Print Media Europe whilst Bill Miller, president Inks Americas, now has the position president Print Media North America. Dennis R. Wolters, president Day International, has announced that he will retire end of June. Until then he will continue to support and advise the Flint Group executive management team on further projects that were initiated with the re-organization.

In Asia-Pacific, Flint Group will transition over time from a country based structure to a divisional organization. As a first step, Brent Stephen, in addition to his primary responsibility as managing director Australia/New Zealand, will lead the print media business in Asia-Pacific as senior vice president for Print Media Asia.

Flint Group has formed a global Packaging and Narrow Web division, comprising the Packaging Inks business activities of Flint Group in Europe and North America and the global Flint Group Narrow Web business. The division is headed by Dr Dirk Aulbert, who formerly held the position president Inks Europe in Flint Group. The Packaging and Narrow Web division manufactures and markets a wide range of printing inks and coatings for the packaging and label markets worldwide.

”The global reach of the new business unit and its clear focus on the Packaging and Label market will enable us to provide tailored products and services to international packaging and label printers across all regions and providing global consultancy services to brand owners, said Aulbert. ‘We will steer our marketing and product development centrally to leverage formulation expertise, best-in-class standards and know-how across the sites, regions and segments. At the same time we are committed to a local sales and technical customer service model that in many cases already today gives us more local presence than many of our local competitors can offer.’

Asked whether the re-organization was also driven by current economic conditions, Charles Knott said: ‘After the major acquisitions between 2004 and 2007 we focused our efforts on the physical integration of the various companies that formed Flint Group as it is today. We improved our efficiency enormously and as such our customers benefited from it. However, to foster growth we proactively want to pick up our customers in their places by adapting our organization to fit to the markets our customers operate in. So while the decision to reorganize was taken as a proactive step long before the economic crisis became apparent, I would consider it the right move at the right time.’

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