November 14th, 2024
Celebrating 50 years of company history
Our Belgian plant celebrated 50 years. No better time for a walk through the history of the company with Koen Verstraete, former CEO.
With an age difference of merely 7 years, you and the company grew up together. What was that like?
Koen: The house we lived in was adjacent to the printing office. Needless to say, I was involved in the company from a very young age folding obituary letters, putting invoices in envelopes and packing labels. I would accompany my dad on Saturdays when he drove across the country in his van to deliver printworks himself. Those trips with my father taught me a lot about sales, he was a true salesman.
I was spoon-fed the printing craftmanship. I started with cleaning out ink trays and gradually learned the skills right on the job from the press operators themselves. I remember when our first 4 color press was introduced in 1979-80, I was equally excited as the seasoned press operators! We started specializing in paper labels for beer or milk bottles after that.
Growing up I witnessed limitless dedication, perseverance, innovation and sincere caring for our employees. I took these values along for the rest of my career.
When and how did Drukkerij Verstraete start IML?
It was about 1987, the same time I officially started working for the company. Our operations got bigger - we weren’t necessarily looking to expand our capabilities. Moving into IML was a coincidence you could say, answering a long-time customer’s request to print margarine labels on film.
Our first steps in IML were characterized by trial and error: managing to produce on our existing off-set machines, finding suppliers for new raw materials as film and lacquers, figuring out the process to get the inks to dry on the film, needing advanced technologies such as the Cutstar… We failed a lot and we learned a lot.
Still you believed in IML as a product?
Yes, because the demand kept growing and even back then in-mold labeling was believed the way forward in terms of sustainability. I remember around 1990 speaking in Amsterdam at an industry event, recycling being a key topic in my speech about the features of IML.
IML was an existing technology, but it was a non-recyclable combination of polystyrene and paper. Polypropylene labels for PP containers was the future.
A big milestone for us was the international interest for our IML labels as from 1991. We were a small Belgian printing company, and never imagined injection molders from Scandinavia or France were looking at us to collaborate with.
Which other milestones will you always remember?
Often at family gatherings we think about good old times. Years flew by and every new challenge, technological achievement, or new market was a milestone for the company – an acknowledgement of our focus on innovation and efficiency.
In 2001, we joined forces with Haendler & Natermann GmbH (Ed. Haendler & Natermann GmbH was acquired by Constantia Flexibles 2 years later), giving us leverage for further investments. It marked the start of a whole new era, with 2007 being a crucial year when we decided to only focus on IML.
That same year we started printing labels for our first major US project. A big milestone as well, which couldn’t have happened without the help of Constantia Flexibles.
And then came our own plant in Batavia, Ohio. A very big step for me as a CEO, I really needed to get used to the idea. But all went smoothly, supported by MCC’s local team.
Do you remember less positive times in the company’s history?
Safe to say learning how to produce in mold labels was marked by trial, error and misery. It wasn’t the most fruitful time for us as a company. Little did we know that during those 2 years, we were building the fundaments of what the company is today!
Funny thing is, while we were working effortlessly, pushing boundaries and looking to the future, we didn’t see it as a ‘hard time’. That’s what we did, you know: we just worked until we saw results.
From a more personal perspective, the hardest time was saying goodbye to our people in 2020. Because of the pandemic, we couldn’t connect in person and we had to leave in a very unpersonal manner – this was against our leadership style and personalities, it left us heartbroken.
Koen Verstraete, former CEO MCC Verstraete
Which values and/or principles have shown to be valuable throughout the years?
We’ve always valued being close to our team. Personal connection, stimulating ownership and creating a result-oriented culture of teamwork has been crucial in building out the company and are key principles to us. I think these corporate values will remain a solid base for the years to come.
