HERGEN to expand business to the North American market
Check out the best excerpts from the latest Talk Tissue with Marcelo dos Santos, Senior Application Engineer at HERGEN
HERGEN is a Brazilian company dedicated to tissue machine manufacturing which is starting its expansion into North America. The company is a family run business which was founded back in 1975. In the last Talk Tissue, Brian Uzcategui interviewed Marcelo dos Santos, Senior Application Engineer at the company.
During the interview, Marcelo presented the company to the North American tissue market and described some of HERGEN’s projects around the world.
“In the late 80s, we supplied our first complete paper machine. It was a floating paper machine [with capacity of] about 200 tons per day and this machine is still running today,” he said. “In 2000, we delivered our first crescent former to a Brazilian customer and this was kind of a major milestone for our company and since 2000 we have delivered many projects throughout the world in the tissue market.”
“Most of our references are in south America, especially in Brazil, but we also have customers in Europe. We have already supplied five crescent formers to Poland, one to Belarus and one to Russia.”
The company also has clients in Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay and Bolivia, and now want to enter the North American market.
For the North American tissue market, HERGEN can provide solutions in terms of reducing the manufacturing cost and energy consumption. “We can supply to North America very high-quality products, with a very reasonable price. We can supply complete machines for private label companies or small converting companies that want to start their own paper manufacturing.”
HERGEN does not only support the tissue industry. Recently, the company finished a project with Idaho Steel, a food grade company, for which HERGEN supplied drum dryer drying cylinders.
The company is already working to have representation as well as technical support in the United States, and their ideal customer would be someone who still does not have their own paper machine but is looking for an opportunity to have one.
“For the customer that has plans to start their own paper manufacturing business, we can be a very good partner based on our experience, our technology and also price-wise,” commented Marcelo.
In 2020 the tissue industry experienced an increase in demand and for HERGEN it was not different: “In the middle of the year, we saw a lot of opportunities in brown paper and in tissue as well, and most of these opportunities became business.”
In its latest projects, HERGEN delivered two machines in Brazil and recently started up a machine in Poland, which was made in a remote way due to the pandemic.
2021 is expected to be a promising year for the company, that has some projects in South America. They have at least two major projects of machines on the range between 90 to 100 tons per day, and one major rebuild at another customer that has already been so successful in terms of improving the production and the final product quality that the client also wants HERGEN to speed up the machine. Moreover, they also have good opportunities in Brazil and on top of that feel like entering the North American tissue market.
Check out the complete Talk Tissue with Marcelo dos Santos, Senior Application Engineer at HERGEN:
