Prudent investment continues at Europlacer
Like everyone else in the SMT industry, we are tightening our belts to cope with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite that, Europlacer is still looking to the future. We’re continuing to make prudent investments to help safeguard our future and to enhance our successful growth plan.
Over the past few years, we have enjoyed significant growth in all territories and consolidated our position in our ‘home’ regions. This includes the setting up of direct sales offices and support hubs in Germany, Italy and Spain, and expanding our sales & service organisations across the Americas and Asia.
These efforts have delivered a growth of 11% (compound annual growth rate) over the past seven years, with USA and China spearheading the improvement in sales volumes and revenue. The number of employees has risen from 114 to 177 in that same period. We plan to grow this significantly in the next five years.
Prior to the outbreak of coronavirus, we had taken a strategic decision to employ in a number of key positions. While many ‘corporate’ organisations at this time will be looking to slim down their workforce rather than hire more people, we are taking a longer-term view in the certain knowledge that the crisis will pass. This will allow us to maintain and even accelerate the significant growth that we have been enjoying. Indeed, being the world’s largest independent manufacturer of SMT equipment without the burden of having to report to shareholders or pay dividends, we firmly believe that we must make these investments. It’s vital that we support our customer base as they too recover from the world-wide crisis.
We are delighted therefore to announce the appointment of:
Thomas Borck (Germany) – Sales Manager
Zeya Karimi (UK) – Regional Sales Executive
Ben Sweeney (UK) – Regional Sales Executive
Kirby Zhang (China) – General Manager State Business Sector
Michael Xing (China) – General Manager Private Business Sector
With many of our existing customers part of critical national supply chains in their respective countries, it has been great to see them continuing to manufacture products over the last month. We know that they are poised to return to full production as soon as the virus threat recedes, as it will. In China, we are already seeing our business levels returning to normality with the peak of the coronavirus passed. Until that moment is reached globally, all of us at Europlacer will continue to support our customers through these difficult times and will be ready and fully resourced to continue doing so when normality does return.
