Flint Group Realigns Organization to Better Meet Customers Needs

Flint Group announced a customer-oriented organization structure aimed at enabling customers to have full access to Flint Group’s broad product portfolio through a single sales contact, supported by in-depth technical support. This will align the organization to market segments and customer applications.
    
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.
    
“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,” Charles Knott, CEO of Flint Group, said. “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 now been appointed president Print Media Europe, while Bill Miller, president Inks Americas, now is president Print Media North America. Dennis Wolters, president Day International, has announced that he will retire at the end of June.
    
“It became apparent soon after Day was acquired by Flint Group, that we could only provide the full benefit of the complementary product ranges to our customers if we were to bring the offset inks businesses, the printing blankets and press room chemicals businesses which serve the same markets, closer together,“ said Mr. Wolters. “We also have started to exploit the potential that exists in bringing the respective research and development activities and technical service teams closer together. We are committed to drive performance further beyond the point of improving each single product, focusing on their interaction on the press to further optimize the printing process.”
    
In Asia-Pacific, Flint Group will transition over time from country-based 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.
    
Further, 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 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,” Dr. Aulbert said. “The packaging and narrow web management team are committed to strengthen and increase investment into the R&D and technology platform to provide innovative packaging solutions to brand owners and retailers.
    
Dr. Aulbert continued, “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.”