Services

From Taiwan to Europe...

July 2014

The Katadyn Products Inc. company whose headquarters is located in Kemptthal near Zurich specialises in the supply of water filters, desalinators, systems dedicated to outdoor activities (gas burners), and other products devoted to trekking. In order to simplify and accelerate its supply chain and its logistics, the company that delivers all over the world from Switzerland undertook a process of repatriation of certain activities from Taiwan to Eastern Europe. At the same time, it has built new, much larger premises in the Zurich suburb. Meeting with Mr. Adrian Schmassmann CEO and Mr. Thomas Dalla Vecchia, who helped the company make this transition to Eastern Europe. (Full story to be discovered in one of our next issue indeed).

No, that’s not a picture to say holidays are for soon. The Optimus range of gas burners were the first product for whom Katadyn looked for partners in Romania for the realisation of all of their metal parts.

"Working with Asia requires more significant constraints than with Europe, particularly in terms of deadlines, flexibility, shipping, culture or communication" says Mr. Schmassmann in the preamble. The company needing more and more small series of different parts, it decided in 2011 to achieve production and assembly of some of its products in Europe.

Growth in Eastern Europe ...and in Switzerland And if the company now has a branch in Romania with which it carries out numerous products and sub-assemblies, the headquarters in Switzerland is also experiencing a strong growth of its activities and its staff.

Knowledge of the market Initially, Katadyn wishes to subcontract to Eastern Europe and has some notions on the particularities of the countries and their production capacities. Romania is clearly part of its short list of interesting countries, but how to enter a completely unknown country? The Director tells us: “We had a contact with Obal and we quickly agreed on our needs: to find a competent partner with which we could develop a sustainable relationship, whatever we speak of partnership or acquisition. We were able to take full advantage of the knowledge of the Eastern European markets of Obal in general and of Mr. Della Vecchia in particular".

There is more to discover (in our full article)

These topics will be explained in Eurotec soon, stay tuned ;o)

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Katadyn Products Inc. Pfäffikerstrasse 37 CH-8310 Kemptthal Tél. +41 44 839 21 11 Fax +41 44 839 21 99 www.katadyn.com

Obal AG Zieglerstrasse 29 Postfach 530 CH-3000 Bern 14 Tél. + 41 31 387 37 37 [email protected] www.obal.ch

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