THE ECHO - Ferrostaal
THE ECHO - Ferrostaal
THE ECHO - Ferrostaal
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INTERVIEW<br />
THINKING OUTSIDE <strong>THE</strong> BOX<br />
An interview with Refugio Gonzales, owner/manager<br />
of the packaging manufacturing company PCD in<br />
Mexico.<br />
Echo: Mr. Gonzales, you founded PCD in 1997 and<br />
today you are market leader for printed packaging in<br />
Mexico. What’s the secret of your success?<br />
Gonzales: Well, my father had thrown me out of his<br />
own company. He had established it when I was just<br />
15 years old. My father is simply very conservative and<br />
I was always a bit of a revolutionary. As a result, we<br />
fought all the time. And so, in 1997, I set up my own<br />
company. We started to produce product packaging<br />
from corrugated cardboard. But we don’t just make<br />
brown cardboard boxes. Our packaging looks great<br />
and is colourfully printed. You couldn’t get this kind of<br />
packaging in Mexico before. The demand was so high<br />
our customers were practically grabbing the stuff out<br />
of our hands! Today we produce 8,000 tons of printed<br />
boxes on MAN machines.<br />
So you’ve discovered a niche …<br />
Yes, but of course that’s not all. What really gives us<br />
the edge over our competitors is that we offer our<br />
customers a full range of packaging-related services.<br />
We don’t just deliver the boxes “just in sequence” to<br />
our customers’ doors. We also take their packaged<br />
products and deliver them to our customers’ customers.<br />
This works very well because our customers can then<br />
focus on their products and don’t have to worry about<br />
the logistics. We take care of that.<br />
So you could say you run a logistics company as<br />
well as a printing works?<br />
Correct. Or, to be more precise – not exactly. My<br />
daughter Larissa manages logistics. This setup just<br />
evolved naturally. We don’t just transport our own<br />
products and our customers products. We also handle<br />
goods from other company, such as bus components<br />
for the production of MAN bus production in Querétaro.<br />
Refugio Gonzales and his daughter Larissa<br />
<strong>THE</strong> <strong>ECHO</strong> 1/2006 13<br />
It sounds like you’re growing.<br />
Yes. We began in 1997 and today we have 300 employees<br />
and we’re still growing. Our annual growth<br />
rate is currently between 30 and 50 percent.<br />
How is such a high growth rate possible?<br />
All profits are re-invested in our company. And our customers<br />
and vendors have become friends. Friends are<br />
something you need when you’re trying to build up a<br />
company. But our market is also growing. At a rate of<br />
approximately 7 percent per year. However, I think the<br />
greatest factor in our growth is the fact that we don’t just<br />
sell boxes; that we offer an end-to-end range of services.<br />
So, what’s next for you?<br />
We want to start making our own paper. To do this,<br />
we need certain equipment and technology, as well as<br />
a power plant. Perhaps we can work together on that<br />
project also. In the long term, I want us to expand into<br />
markets outside of Mexico. I see a lot of growth<br />
potential there.