"Challenges as chances": Mosca weathers COVID-19 storm with digitalization
15 Jul 2020 | Mosca
Confronted by the coronavirus pandemic, “Mittelstand” strapping machines and material specialist Mosca quickly realized that digitalization would be instrumental in weathering the storm. Adrian Ritzhaupt, Group Director Commercial & Service, shares how the German company responded immediately to the interpack postponement, while detailing the success story of its virtual event substituting for the brick-and-mortar trade show. Having received positive feedback from event attendees, Ritzhaupt explains how Mosca is preparing for next year's interpack both physically and digitally.
This is Aisha here reporting for Packaging Insights.
I'm here with Adrian Ritzo.
He's the group director, commercial and Service at Moscow.
Hi, Adrian, thanks for joining us.
Can you begin with a brief overview of your company, the markets you cater for, and geographically where you're present?
Yeah, thanks for the chance, and the, and the discussion.
Moscow is like a supplier of, of load securing systems.
We are family-owned and in the business for more than 50 years.
We are a so-called German Mittelstand company, which is like, globally present.
We're operating with, 22 companies in 17 countries worldwide and, we have more than 1000 employees.
Our main markets, we're focusing on is like paper and packaging industries, but also any kind of logistic applications, can be like in food processing, electronics, light goods industries like everywhere where you have to secure a load or a bundle, for transportation can be intra logistics can be also like and to the finals to the end customer.
So, yeah, we have quite a wide range.
Range of, of customers and because we are manufacturer of the machinery as as the consumable, what is like a polypropylene or PET strap, we can, we can act like one source supplier for our customers for everything, so we supply the entire solution and our customer gets machinery, consumables, and, after sales out of one hand.
So, so this is our, our main business.
And recently, what are your latest packaging machinery solutions and what's the focus of your R&D?
Yeah, like what I, what I said before, like we have a wide range of, markets and applications, so I think it's really important always to have a close eye on, on the needs of your customers and, so we are developing in different directions depending on the application and markets.
But all in all I think the big picture what we're seeing currently and where we have the highest focus.
Is, the digitalization at all.
So, we see a, a big benefit in offering our customers a smart solution to improve their productivity and, gain up time for our, our customers.
I think this is our, our major topic and during those times of COVID-19, I think, everybody sees like how important this topic.
Is and will become in future that you have a good communication between, the entire production line and every chain of the production and at every link of the production chain and I, I think this is just the major topic we're looking into it and we will integrate in different products so that we are prepared for the future.
Can you specify perhaps how COVID-19 impacted the value chain that you operated in, and how did you see changes in consumer demand during this time?
Yeah, COVID, I think impacted us like, like every other company, and for our own business but also for the businesses of our customers, as a global player acting worldwide for sure like travel restrictions, lockdowns of, of, of entire regions and countries, was challenging.
But I think we, we also saw like positive signs on different regions, different markets, for example, like customers in the so-called essential businesses, which have a higher demand than before because like pharmaceuticals and, and food processing and, and packaging, e-commerce business like was, was increasing.
But all in all for sure we see that there is an impact, on the invests of companies.
So there will be also a lot of reviews and, so we will see how it goes, to be honest, we will see the entire impact more like end of the year and then the next years following.
I, I think main important is that you, you see this change as a chance, that you not see it as a threat, so now you have to work out what are the opportunities out of it, and, we are trying to focus all our energy, to build the future, to look forward to create new products, to create, new possibilities instead of fighting our situation or the past because it won't help.
The situation is how it is.
The, the world keeps on turning, and we have to adapt to it.
That's it.
Along those lines, COVID-19 clearly caused the cancellation of InterPAC.
What impact does this does this cancellation have on your business and in what sense are you preparing for next year's InterPAC?
It was a big hit.
We, 2020, was planned to be a big exhibition year for, for Moscow.
We planned for more than 20 exhibitions worldwide, big exhibitions.
Our, our main exhibitions also with the InterPAC, and, we were in the final preparations, and now everything changed from one day to another.
And , but also there, what, what I said before, also there we, we, we, we try to take the challenge as a chance and we created an own digital exhibition booth.
So we brought our entire machinery, the booth into a 3D model and to bring it on an online platform.
So, we were able to support our customers with an online version of the Interpack so our entire booth for the interpack was, was, was online in the World Wide Web.
So, also our customers, really used the chance and went to the homepage, saw our new solutions, we're able to chat with our, our, our guys, via the chat or like phone calls, so we had like our sales and our technical team present to support our customers with any question and we really received a good feedback for it, from our business partner from.
Customers, and we also see it as a, another platform.
I, I think if you ask me like can a digital exhibition replace a physical real-life exhibition 100%, I, I don't think so, but I think it's a good option, to create more visibility for your products and, I think also in future by when you're asking for the preparations for 2021, we will definitely.
Prepare for the physical real-life exhibition Interpack, but definitely also we will look into the digital version, because we see there are another platform we can use, to get more contact to our customers, and also to show, more of our products and innovations.
So also this, we take it as a, as a chance and, so we will prepare on, on two different ways now for the next year.
Exciting.
Can you perhaps give us one or two examples of, the products and innovations that you showcase during your virtual event?
Yeah, , we're really proud that we still were able to showcase it, right, so, also this was postponed but nevertheless we, we were able to do so and we, we were shown like an end of line system, to, to handle the, the products, for palletizing also with a robot.
Palletizing system and load securing and so also there our target is always to, to provide a solution from one source.
And so I think this is also like a a good chance for us to support our customers with more efficiency and I think a smart solution.
The second part, where we had a big focus for this show, was the digitalization again, where we are in discussions with our customer and also in the future we'll have discussions and fruitful discussions with our customers about how can we implement systems based on digitalization which can support the processes.
We're talking about, pay per use models.
We're talking about, consumable management with just in time deliveries.
We're talking about in the after-sales direction, predictive maintenance.
I think these are all possibilities now and with COVID showing us how fragile the entire structure is, I think these are really the topics for the future and we want to focus on it.
We're still at the beginning, but, this is the way we want to follow that.
Thank you so much for your time.
You're welcome.
