Second location for motan-colortronic Brazil – a review
Review: the Santa Catarina location in southern Brazil was established on paper in 2019, before the start of construction and active operations from January 2020. The location serves as a central logistics centre for the whole of Brazil for motan-colortronic. Enjoying a great strategic and logistical situation, it is not far from the ports of Porto Itapoa, Itajai and Paranguana.
The 1400 m² of building space contain 500 pallet bays with strategic warehouses for small and medium-size customer projects, which are especially beneficial for our customers in one respect: fast delivery times. For example, smaller orders can be delivered in two to four weeks, despite the 60 Hz special function. As well as the logistics centre, the buildings also contain a spare parts warehouse, a showroom and a tech centre. The latter is used by motan-colortronic primarily for customer and employee training and as a representative systems installation for this region. Up to now, all training courses have been held on-site – however, support can also be provided in the digital environment. To improve support in the region and increase customer proximity, four new employees have already been added in the region and they will focus exclusively on supporting customers in this region. Two or three new employees will be added to the sales team, who will temporarily make use of the location in a modern shared-office atmosphere.
The expansion of the location drove continued growth in regional activities, accounting for 15 – 20% of annual turnover for this territory. The aim is to provide the region with high-quality automation products and provide great, sustainable service for customers in the region with in-depth support. In Brazil, sustainable service means focusing on the customer. Starting with consulting tailored to the customer, the delivery can also be adjusted for each customer to achieve the ideal cost-benefit effect. Our employees are directly responsible for installation, start-up and training, ensuring that customers are in direct contact with the local motan partner. Performance assessment also takes place periodically, and users of the units receive follow-up training at the customer location or in the tech centre.
Of course, the pandemic has not made it particularly easy to perform initial training and coordination within the teams in recent times. Despite this, the solution was to introduce regular travel activity between the two motan locations. Employees travelled from Santa Catarina to São Paulo for training courses, while employees from São Paulo worked from the offices in Santa Catarina. This affects employees from all departments, from Project Management and Logistics to Administration and Controlling. This enabled training for local employees, while also strengthening the corporate culture in both locations at the same time.
motan will emerge from the pandemic in a stronger situation to pursue the objectives that have been set for the year 2025. These naturally include increasing turnover and enlarging the market share for motan peripheral devices in automated, modern plastics production for the Santa Catarina region in Brazil. The focus will be on improving productivity in customer systems and on customer retention to ensure that these customers make long-term, sustainable investments in robust, customer-specific motan system solutions.
