Servipap offers a one-stop shop for the tissue industry

Servipap is a supplier to the tissue industry which is well-known in Latin America and would like to further expand its reach into the North American market. In the latest Talk Tissue, Hector Hurtado, co-owner of Servipap talked to Brian Uzcategui about the company and its perspectives.

The company was formed in 2011 with the idea of bringing products to different tissue converters in North America and Latin America, however it started as a supplier of jumbo parent rolls.

“At the moment our idea was to bring parent rolls from North America and Asia to tissue converters that we already had relationships with,” says Hector.

Later, the company started to grow and expanded its business operations by supplying the industry with second had machinery. “When Servipap started entering the machinery sector as well, we started very small with secondhand equipment (…) as the years went by, we started expanding our product offerings, not only from parent rolls, but also we started offering machinery. With that came parts, technical services and then eventually we added the product line of core stock for our clients.”

“So, in a nutshell, the idea was to offer our clients a one-stop shop in a way. Especially for those clients that were entering the business, so they wouldn’t have to deal with many different supplier companies and we could provide a package for them in which we could supply the raw material , the machinery installations and training as those clients grew, we grew with them as well,” explains Hector.

Hector also mentioned how they identified the market opportunity to start Servipap’s operations. “In 2011, when we formed the company, there was an opportunity for companies like ours to have a presence in the industry, because if you look back a little bit, brokers of machinery were dedicated only to brokering machinery, whether new or secondhand. Brokers of final rolls were focused only supplying parent rolls and I think that was the beauty of our company that we could bring to new clients these products that we knew and, in a way, educate them and provide those services to them, so they could have a fast start-up and a smaller learning curve in a way.”

While discussing the “ideal customer” for Servipap, Hector argues that it depends on the product and the project. When talking about a new company, medium or small in size, Servipap can assist them and help with consultations. “We can definitely provide that and not only supplying the machinery or consulting them what type of equipment will work better for them according to the product needs. Same thing for raw material, parent rolls and corestock.”

However, when talking about larger companies, he says “we do have products that will fit their needs to highly advanced converting lines for rewinding products. There are also technologies that can be incorporated into existing converting lines, for example marrying rolls or packaging equipment or upgrades to lamination units.”

Servipap provides high speed new equipment as well as secondhand machinery that they are sourcing really from all over the world. Interested parties can visit Servipap’s website in the section called “Projects” and check out some of the projects they’ve done over the past few years.

“We’ve been able to source machinery from Asia coming all the way to North America, from Europe going to South America, South America coming to North America. It’s just positioning this equipment around the world depending on the needs of the clients.”

The company is promotin new technologies in its new equipment. “In addition to the speed, we are offering what we call ‘bulktech technology’ which allows clients to have clean perfect winding from beginning to end.” In addition to that, in the new lines, Servipap offers a tool-less lamination in which Hector says “is an upgrade that clients can choose in which you’re changing from nested to point to point. There is very minimal human intervention on the change of steel rolls.”

They also talked about 2020, its challenges and achievements. “Even though it was a challenging year, Servipap still managed to complete projects in North America for new equipment and secondhand equipment. Some of those projects were driven by the crazy demand of toilet paper products and that we saw some of our clients shifting from the away from home production of rolls now to consumer rolls.”

“Very early on this year we started seeing a shift for more demand for away from home machinery. So, even though it’s a bit early to tell, because the pandemic obviously is still out there (…), but we are still seeing a shift from our clients going back a little bit to away from home, I would call them ‘normal requests’,” says Hector while sharing with Brian some predictions for 2021.

Despite the pandemic 2020 was a busy year for Servipap, which had projects in North America, Latin America and Europe.

Check out the complete Talk Tissue with Hector Hurtado, co-owner at Servipap: