THE ECHO - Ferrostaal

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