At IBIE, Coperion’s leaders shared with Baking+Biscuit International insights into integrating its brands of Bakon, Baker Perkins, DIOSNA, Kemuetc, Peerless, Shaffer, Shick Esteve, Unifiller and VMI; into its Food, Health & Nutrition division and what this means for their work with bakers in the long run.
Matt Craig – President, Coperion, Food, Health & Nutrition, Blake Day – Head of Special Projects, Coperion Food, Health & Nutrition, Cristopher Isom – General Manager/Head of Global Food Commercial-Systems, Ingredient Automation, Coperion, Food, Health & Nutrition, and Martin Murphy – General Manager, Finished Deserts and Meal Solutions shared the company’s strategy in an interview.
Catalina Mihu: This is a year of big changes for Coperion: a new visual identity was recently unveiled for all Coperion’s brands that reflects the structure and strategy for the companies under the Food, Health & Nutrition Division. The changes are already visible when visiting the IBIE stand. Could you outline the strategy for the new brand integration? What was the concept behind it?
Blake Day: IBIE was a great opportunity to show how the company envisioned the strategy moving on, and how bakers should expect it to work. The layout of the stand reflects that: the team set it up by zones focusing on ingredient automation, fermentation, mixing, forming and dividing, as well as depositing, decorating and cutting. This is why the team placed a Peerless mixer next to a Shaffer mixer, for instance, or Unifiller downstream solutions integrated with Bakon products. Regardless of legacy brand, it’s all about finding the best solution for the customer. It is all Coperion.
Mihu: So the focus is shifted to the process rather than the brand that provides a certain solution.
Blake Day: The process and then the product that would apply to it.
Unite and conquer
Mihu: What was the strategy behind this integration approach?
Blake Day: There were several business models we could have adopted in integrating the brands, which are all leaders in their process areas. We could have continued running them independently or, we take what we felt was a better approach of combining all of the brands under Coperion Food, Health, and Nutrition, to be able to bring solutions that demonstrate that we understand what customers want. Our customers prefer leaning more on suppliers for integrated solutions, and having fewer standalone purchase orders to manage. We have businesses in various food markets, bakery being the biggest. This is why we decided to go forward with the integration of the brands, and with the way we manage the business, manage costs, and leverage where we manufacture products.
“As we go forward, adopting the production of some equipment to different parts of the world where we see demand from our customers, will ultimately bring the solutions our customers need, in the most efficient manner.”
Blake Day, Head of Special Projects, Coperion Food, Health & Nutrition
For instance, we have some products that are only made in Europe, and some products are only made in North America; we want to be able to build these technologies where our customers are. So, as we go forward, adopting the production of some equipment to different parts of the world where we see demand from our customers, will ultimately bring the solutions our customers need, in the most efficient manner.
Mihu: Is the entire portfolio still available worldwide? And its manufacturing will dynamically shift to match the demand?
Chris Isom: Our goal is to be able to have our technologies made in all three of our main areas around the world – the Americas, EMEA and APAC. Obviously, that takes time. When our commercial teams visit customers, they should be able to bring mixing, forming and dosing applications into their conversations, even if the legacy business they come from is Shick Esteve, for example. In this way, we can work as a team to support the customer throughout the process; we can assist customers in production, help maintain their up-time and operational efficiency so they can grow their business.
Mihu: What made all the Coperion Food, Health & Nutrition brands the right choice for an acquisition in the bakery industry?
Matt Craig: Our technology brands’ extensive presence in the market was the determining factor. All of these brands are known for quality, reliability and innovation; they have a global reach with multiple companies, so it fit with Coperion’s goals to grow in North America, but also in Europe.
Mihu: How much of the Coperion FHN’s business is represented by bakery now?
Matt Craig: It depends on the year, but it would be more than half, by and large.
Mihu: As the companies came together, how did the strategy fall into place to not have them operate as distinct companies, but to work together as a unified brand?
Martin Murphy: It takes time, because you can’t ‘upset the apple cart’ and just go ahead with these kinds of changes from one day to the next; this is, and has been, a matter of time. All teams contributed to the planning. The leadership team laid out the direction we needed to take, and we started working on a strategy to achieve that goal. It’s not easy to centralize when you have multiple platforms, multiple companies, and thousands of people. But everybody’s working together as a team under one brand – Coperion, which is something that has been a rewarding and insightful process. It takes time to grow and build. It’s been a transformative two years. We started with very simple, everyday things, for instance: How do we sell? What do we sell? We’ve been learning from each other and embracing our synergies. Now, if any team has a project for which they need help in some areas, they know they can rely on a huge group of brands and experts to help develop complete projects for customers.
Matt Craig: It’s great to show here at IBIE, how this transformation took place because some of the brands have extensive background specialties that sometimes overlap.
“The opportunities are bigger and faster.”
Martin Murphy, General Manager, Finished Deserts and Meal Solutions
Mihu: And what does the new structure look like; how were the teams remade?
Martin Murphy: Indeed, there is some overlapping, for example, with Bakon and Unifiller, or Peerless and Shaffer. But, with their combined solutions, we get quality technologies that we grow into one unified company and keep the brands as we have. The process doesn’t happen overnight, but the teams all understand the path we’re on, so we are all working towards one goal. In this sense, it’s not a huge transition, but it is a continuous transformation. You can’t make the leap in one day; you make it over a period of time, while adapting to certain things. We’re also investing in tools – one being a Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) automated system, so we can centralize all our quotations – making them easily accessible.
Our combined size makes these sorts of investment possible. When we’re working on complete lines or factories, we’re able to combine all our brands’ efforts and simplify or optimize the customer’s process. Having nine different brands, quoting nine different things is not efficient for the customer or for us; that’s why we’re moving into many singular workflows. This is the growth path we are on, which is a good thing because our brands each make something different and every continent is also a little different than the other – needs in Europe are not the same as those in North America, but the technologies we bring are adaptive for each region and the teams work very well together and adapt to local needs.
The teams’ everyday work is still similar to how it was before the integrations. In the past, we were doing the same things separately, in different places; now, we are combining them, which brings a more accessible partner to our customers – extensive expertise and integrated solutions from one brand.
Power in numbers
Mihu: How is R&D work set up? Do DIOSNA and VMI each carry out their own R&D work, for example?
Martin Murphy: Before integrating our brands, we used to do R&D independently. We still perform some directional R&D, but we now do it through a unified, global engineering group. Through a combined team, we can balance the team effort and combine R&D expertise from around the world – that’s brought us an incredible pool of skills to utilize.
Blake Day: We’ve structured R&D to have a single team with centralized leadership overseeing it and bringing all the R&D projects and knowledge together. We obviously have several things within the businesses that are already in development. We are finishing those developments, but then we’re challenging those teams: for example, what is the next best thing from a mixing application? We are changing the perspective of our teams from soley thinking about their legacy brand. Instead, we’re looking at how we can bring their innovation and best practice into our technologies. As an example, here at IBIE, for Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) applications: we are showing how we apply AGVs based on the way that mixers are designed. It can be slightly different for applications, but we are highlighting to customers that we can provide the application in whatever existing installation, whether it’s DIOSNA, VMI, or another of our technology brands, and we showcase how we can support that. Our ultimate goal is to meet customers where they are and provide them with the solutions they need for their application.
“We’ve structured R&D to have a single team with centralized leadership overseeing it and bringing all the R&D projects and knowledge together.”
Blake Day, Head of Special Projects, Coperion Food, Health & Nutrition
Chris Isom: We ask questions such as, ‘What is the best technology or system for what the customer wants to manufacture and their processes?’ And it ends up being brand agnostic because all that matters is that it’s from the Coperion Food, Health and Nutrition portfolio. If a legacy Unifiller product was used, but there’s a better application using Bakon technologies, we’re going to sell that because it’s all Coperion FHN, and that is the best solution for the project and the customer.
As we bring all the brands together, we are evaluating their growth segments and investment needs. Going forward, we will continue to bring innovative solutions to the bakery space and other markets because we’ve brought these teams together to investigate the next best thing in mixing, in depositing, in material handling and other applications for customers, for example. It also gives us a broader perspective on each process and application. A certain technology might be great in baking, but it might also be great in pet food, or in confectionery, dairy, or prepared foods. We go to market efficiently and reinvest into the business to develop innovative products such as the HIRO Robot made by Martin’s team using Unifiller technologies. The AGV we referenced, or our Connect Advisor digital technology for aftersales support are all examples of how we are investing in innovations that address customer challenges
Mihu: Each of these brands has a well-established name in its field for their solutions. How does Coperion leverage that going forward and not have their earned value diluted in the integration?
Martin Murphy: We don’t lose anything, that’s for sure. Our customers and associates are gaining from all the combined knowledge. If I do something in R&D that fits for one brand, but it also matches something that VMI technologies, as an example could benefit from, the know-how and the solutions are shared. These are the advantages we gain. We don’t lose anything, quite the opposite – we’re actually building in capabilities and expertise from the integration.
“You can’t ‘upset the apple cart’ and just go ahead with these kinds of changes from one day to the next; this is, and has been, a matter of time. All teams contributed to the planning. The leadership laid out the direction we needed to take, and we started working on a strategy to work on this path. And everybody’s been working on that ever since.”
Martin Murphy, General Manager, Finished Deserts and Meal Solutions
Matt Craig: The brands themselves did not disappear just because we’ve changed color – they are positioned as technologies of a single entity – Coperion Food, Health and Nutrition (FHN). The value all our brands had before is still there, we’re still leveraging the benefit of them.
Martin Murphy: The integration allows each brand to now access shared knowledge and work with experts in another area, with whom they can grow our business through. It’s amplified brain power.
Blake Day: There is leverage in bringing these businesses together. It’s still supporting our customers, but better. If a customer wants to buy a specific piece of equipment or an entire integrated system, we provide it, while we also open the door to other solutions that exist in the Coperion FHN portfolio, and the additional solutions we have available that help answer their needs. While we could talk about cross-selling in the first few years, we are really providing ingredient delivery systems and dosing, complete with mixing or even forming applications. We see considerable interest in such applications from our customers, as well as in corresponding master service agreements. Our Coperion brands bring a lot of engineering and project management experience, so the execution capability of full lines increases, but now all from a single source.
“We ask questions such as, ‘What is the best tool for the job, for what they want to manufacture?’ And it ends up being brand agnostic because all that matters is that it’s from a Coperion Food, Health and Nutrition portfolio.”
Matt Craig, President, Coperion, Food, Health & Nutrition
In our previous format, our brands were more focused on equipment.Today, we can meet customers wherever they are. If they need to buy just a single piece because they’re replacing something, a line extension, or building out an entire factory, we’re the process engineering company for it. My goal is to continue to evolve this business from where we were, a group of equipment companies, to where we are now, a process engineering firm with decades of expertise. And I think that’s a big differentiator in what we can do and the value that we can bring to our clients in supporting their products.
And at the end of the day, the integration is about protecting and being the stewards of each brand, which I think is critically important. We talk to our manufacturing teams, engineering, and to as many of our colleagues as possible, to gain their insights. With our solutions, we all feed our families; what we do is so important. There’s real value in that, and we are reinforcing it within the organization.
New and improved
Mihu: With combined resources, how does new product development look now? We can see the first results here, at the show, with the three new launches – Connect Advisor digital remote services, the HIRO cake decorating robot, and integrated AGV technologies.
Blake Day: Our teams have seen a need in the Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) market, since they were originally designed for warehouses. We’re now building AGVs for bakery environments. That means that, through our AGVs, bakeries can automate the transport of bread, bun and dough – improving efficiency, traceability and operational safety.
“My goal is to continue to evolve this business from a group of equipment companies to a process engineering firm with decades of expertise.”
Matt Craig, President, Coperion, Food, Health & Nutrition
Matt Craig: Were the AGV solutions that are highlighted at IBIE developed by the teams working together in the new structure?
Blake Day: They have been working this way for some time. A portion of R&D was already in flight within the business, when the integration process started. We are now rolling them out to the market, as well as the aftersales Connect Advisor digital platform for use across our portfolio, to support customers and our field service teams.
The baker’s point of view
Mihu: In the integration process, have you discovered that there were roles for which you needed to hire new specialists?
Blake Day: We had a lot of people already in place. We didn’t have to bring in new technical specialists; our teams were broad enough. Now, we are bringing these teams together under one group to prioritize tasks as a whole unit.
“Today, we can meet customers
wherever they are.”
Blake Day, Head of Special Projects, Coperion Food, Health & Nutrition
Mihu: How has the day-to-day work changed for the teams? And what changes for bakers working with Coperion from now on?
Chris Isom: The simplicity of working with a single person, business or team remains. Customers who have a relationship with a salesperson in whichever group, as a single point of contact, will continue working with that person, who will now be able to present other applications from the rest of the brands. When needed, we manage the business to support that salesperson to bring solutions other than their legacy brand to market. This is because people buy from people, from my perspective. This is still a people-business and we’re trying to always prioritize that. Larger businesses with many global touchpoints also benefit from having a core, key account management team that brings consistency for their multiple touchpoints.
Overall, the team is bigger now, and we’ve established effective communication between the groups, while we all maintain our customer focus. The bakers are the number one priority. But, nothing changes from the bakers’ perspective in the way they work together with our teams. The offering we can provide has just expanded – but from a single source. Bakers are able to benefit from faster development and delivery.
Martin Murphy: With every system integration, we consult heavily with the bakers. When we have a complex project, which can be completely automated with high-capacity lines, bakers supply us with information and sometimes give us a platform to work within. Consulting with our customers is how we continue to grow and develop. Now we just have more horsepower behind us with a much broader team, including many more engineers than we used to have as separate entities. When you are used to working with 14 to 20 engineers and all of a sudden you can tap into 150 engineers, working speed, knowledge and ideas grow exponentially. Now we can do much more. The opportunities are getting bigger and faster.
