COMPLETE FILLING AND PACKAGING LINES

MUCH IN DEMAND, EVEN IN TIMES OF CRISIS

The Upakovka, the leading packaging trade fair in Russia, attracted 20,500 professional visitors from all the CIS regions and neighbouring states from 27 to 30 January. Some 900 international exhibitors presented their products and services on a net area covering 19,000 square metres – and they were extremely satisfied after the 4 busy days.

"The impact of the worldwide economic crisis and the credit crunch have cooled demand in the Russian packaging market at the moment, but by no means brought it to a standstill", says Reinhard Koch, together with his son Ulli, co-managing director of the firm KOCH Industrieanlagen GmbH. "Even if some investment projects have been shelved for the time being, the need for innovative technologies to secure future-proof production is undiminished. In spite of all the current difficulties Russia will become one of the largest consumer markets in the world. Analysts estimate that the country will be one of them no later than 2025. And the manufacturers in the Russian Federation will have to invest if they want to be in the position to satisfy consumers' needs and withstand the competitive pressures. With this in mind some large Russian and multinational groups are in fact doing precisely that right now."

The interest was correspondingly keen at the Upakovka, especially in the turnkey KOCH filling and packaging lines. "We were impressed by the visitors' freedom and scope for making decisions: they came well-prepared, asked for specific information and showed definite interest in placing orders. We simply hadn't expected to be holding so many intensive talks at this moment in time. It all makes things look very optimistic for after-fair sales", says Thomas Theis, sales engineer at KOCH.

Walter Ratz, also part of our export team and an authority on the Russian market, sums it up like this: "The economic situation in the region and worldwide means Russian companies are facing huge challenges at the moment. In particular it has become difficult to finance projects, which is giving especially the small- and medium-size businesses a hard time. The fact that we have seen such a positive response against the backdrop of these underlying conditions shows that our portfolio of flexible robot systems and high-availability, custom-designed complete systems is precisely what the market wants. And that puts us in an ideal position not only today but also for the future."

Ulli Koch sees it like this: "Russia is still the most important market in Central and Eastern Europe for the German manufacturers of packaging machines. The visitors from the trade have made full use of the four-day fair to get all the information they can about our products, especially our one-stop shopping solutions. The encouraging intensification of existing contacts, establishing very promising new business connections, progressing potential solutions and projects, – in a nutshell – the success of our second time at the fair in Russia strengthens our resolve to step up our sales activities in the CIS."

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