HELSINGBORG, Sweden—Marvaco has celebrated its 100th anniversary, along with a name change following its acquisition of Linds Flexo Ltd. last year.
The 100th anniversary, celebrated in the autumn, brings on a new upturn for the Swedish prepress company Linds Flexo, now stronger than ever. With about 100 clients, partners and staff representatives present, this milestone received its finishing touch when the company’s name was changed. The Finnish prepress company Marvaco Ltd. bought Linds Flexo Ltd. in August 2013, and starting last month, both companies will be known by the name of Marvaco.
Linds Flexo has its roots in a small engraving shop in the city of Helsingborg. In 1950s, the shop expanded its product selection from handstamps to packaging printing. For decades, the company was responsible for the printing plates of many companies, such as the tetra packages of the Tetra Pak company.
Mats Lind received the mantle of the company’s leader from his father in the late 1990s. The clientele, even larger than before, learned to know Linds Flexo as a reliable and service focused repro company.
As years went by, Lind noticed that the small company’s resources for growth and expansion were limited, motivating him to begin looking for partners in the Nordic region to realize his visions. Finally, conversations with Marvaco’s managing director Kai Lankinen showed that the views and values of the two companies were similar. Marvaco is a stable and well organized company with potential for growth, all of which appealed to Lind.
Most of all, the competencies of Marvaco complement that of the professionals at Linds Flexo, says Lind, now the managing director of Marvaco’s operations in Sweden.
The managing director of Marvaco, Kai Lankinen, says that the past year together with Linds Flexo has been thoroughly positive.
Thanks to their considerable experience, the company excels at creating precise quality that receives praise from the clients.
The joint venture of the two companies made it the biggest flexo plate producer and the leading prepress company in the Nordic Countries and the joined companies offer the Nordic clientele a broader base than before. Kai Lankinen says that Marvaco will continue to take good care of the clients in both Finland and Sweden as well in Scandinavia. For companies planning exports or being local in Scandinavia, Marvaco offers a stronger partnership than before, both in terms of geography and language areas. The international awards the company has received with its clients show that the quality of their work is at the top of the field, even globally.
At the same time, the sphere of activities of Marvaco is expanding. Sales director Herkko Mali says that Marvaco will utilize the brand alliance model, commonly used by many prepress houses in Central Europe and the U.S., to expand its services to brands operating in many Nordic countries. This expansion will start in the fall. Beginning in September, Mali has been responsible for the sales to brand owners in Sweden, in addition to the sales in Finland. A direct contact to brand clients makes the packaging artwork production more straightforward than before. Mali says that Marvaco offers its brand clients services such as project management of product ranges, artwork versioning and modeling, for example three dimensional models and mockup models of the products.
Brands can utilize them in consumer testing, for example. When the packaging goes to print, the result is more polished than before, Mali says. In Marvaco’s activities, the brand alliance model extending to the printing houses is a good example of exhaustive collaboration in order to strengthen activities, as Kai Lankinen says. The celebration also saw an announcement of the companies’ newest investment in their second Full HD Flexo equipment. This allows the production of more vivid and detailed prints with printing plates.
According to Lankinen, the joining of Marvaco and Linds Flexo in Finland and Sweden also brought an opportunity of continuous learning and improvement for the staff of the company. The coworkers in different countries are now prepping each other.