Giovanni Bettini, Sales Director of MHI Europe, has confirmed the company finalised an agreement with Kyiv Cardboard and Paper Mill in October 2020 for the supply of a four colour EVOL 100 flexo folder gluer, complete with MPF-M pre-feeder.
Based in Obukhiv, Ukraine, KCPM expects to take delivery of the high volume casemaker line in early 2022. This will be the second EVOL line running within the group, following the installation of an EVOL at the company’s Europack facility in Voronezh, Russia in 2019.
“We began discussions in March 2020, as Kyiv Cardboard and Paper Mill were looking to replace an existing miniline,” explains Giovanni Bettini. “However, during the discussions, the KCPM project team realised that they could actually replace two lines – one miniline and one midline – with a single EVOL casemaker. They evaluated their work mix and saw that the EVOL could not only handle the volume of both machines, but also improve on product quality at the same time.”
“We were looking for the machine with high folding accuracy, as more and more of our customers are using automatic case erecting machines,” says Viktor Semenets, General Director, KCPM. “Our research showed us that the EVOL is capable of producing accurate boxes with no waste inside the box after die-cutting process. With the MHI stripping system, we will be able to produce excellent quality boxes.”
“It was a challenging sales project, as the process was not straight forward due to the restrictions on travel due to COVID-19,” explains Giovanni Bettini. “We had to undertake the whole presentation by email and phone calls; we also had to run a demo on a machine by video-link, as the customer was not able to travel to a suitable site in Europe to see a machine running. But fortunately, the customer had access to colleagues who already had experience with the EVOL, thanks to there already being one in daily operation at a sister-company, Europack.”
Giovanni Bettini concludes, “We are delighted to have a second EVOL in this Group and this will also be the second EVOL to be running in Ukraine. This brings the total number to seven lines in the post-soviet territory. This order has been made possible by the hard work of our sales team during these extraordinary times; thanks to Anna Salamandra and Yulia Sergeeva from the MHI Moscow office, where we also have two dedicated service engineers and a spare parts warehouse that ensures consistent supply or service and parts to our customers in the region.”
Left to right: Yulia Sergeeva (MHIR), Oleksiy Katyshev (DGD-Commercial Director), Anna Salamandra (MHIR), Viktor Semenets (General Director), Nina Kolodiy (Financial Director), Igor Krynytskyi (Deputy Chief Engineer for Modernization), Oleksandr Kravchenko (Chief Engineer) and Mykola Chernyak (Head of Modernization).
