NEWS | INTERVIEW Mocom marks its first year
A year ago, Otto Krahn Group split out its Albis compounding business and created Mocom. Chris Smith talks to CEO Ian Mills about the move and its future plans
A new name in global compounding emerged a year ago – Mocom. Created through Otto Krahn Group’s decision to split its com- pounding activities from its Albis distribution business — a move first trailed at K2019 —the goal was to give each company the ability to shape themselves to meet their specific market needs. According to Ian Mills, who took on the role of CEO of the new standalone Mocom compounding business, the decision is already delivering benefits. “It has done what it was meant to do. It has brought into focus the things you would expect for a manufac- turer,” he says. “We have had to look at the way that we do things in sharp detail.” While Mocom is a new
name, it is attached to an organisation with a 50-year compounding timeline. Today, the business com- prises three manufacturing sites in Germany employing some 550 people, plus production operations at Duncan in South Carolina in the US and Changshu in China each employing around 100. It also operates
Mocom CEO Ian Mills: looking to create a start-up culture
Mocom’s future is underpinned on its focus on engineered custom compounds for long-lifetime applications
its own sales office and distribution warehouse in Mexico. More than 60 com- pounding lines are in opera- tion across the five produc- tion sites and group sales for this year will amount to around €300m. “The Mocom brand is still under development but what we wanted to do was to get a start-up culture,” says Mills. “That’s difficult when you’ve already been compounding for many years.” Part of the thinking behind the decision to move compounding outside of the much larger Albis distribution business was to implement a structure and strategy more suited to that of a manufacturing opera- tion. Mills says that has deliv- ered benefits but also exposed a few system weaknesses in the company. Mills attributes those
weaknesses largely to the 12 IMAGE: MOCOM
exceptional business conditions the business had to navigate due to the pandemic. “Our numbers really fell dramatically,” he says. The pandemic impacted first on the company’s compounding business in China in January and February, then in Europe and the US around April to May. Some markets re- mained strong throughout — medical devices for example — but other significant sectors — such as automotive — were hit very hard. Activity then recov- ered rapidly from October 2020 and has continued at high levels since, presenting unprecedented challenges for Mocom and the wider compounding industry. “Part of the stress in the supply chain was that automotive slowed quickly then picked up fast,” says Bernd Sparenberg, VP Global Sales, Marketing and
Development at Mocom. “As soon as it picked up industry could not cope. That stress combined with the shortages became very difficult; there was almost no availability in certain fillers.” Prior to its establishment as a standalone operation, Albis had initiated compounding investments in 2018 at its plants at Zülpich and Obern- burg in Germany and these are in full operation. The company is now turning its investment focus to its Chinese operation. “We are creating new capacity in China and that’s happening now. We are adjusting our working patterns to add around 30% more capacity; longer term we expect to add new investment in terms of new production assets,” Mills says. He also sees scope to
grow further in the US, with the two compounding lines already added to the Duncan-based business it acquired from joint venture partner Barnet in 2018 likely to be supplemented to support the company’s growth plans. Group-wide, Mills sees
further potential for target- ed performance-enhancing investments. “There are still further benefits to be realised around the manu- facturing set up in particu- lar,” he says. “We are developing that around a manufacturing excellence strategy. That will be around sustainability and energy efficiency - our future investments will be energy efficient – and automation.” Mocom will also be
www.compoundingworld.com
IMAGE: MOCOM
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