Wednesday, September 8, 2021 there was an article in the local Volendam newspaper the New Volendam in which managing director Robert Kwakman being interviewed about developments within our company.
Read the entire article below.
Family business KIVO continues to innovate
to move forward for generations
KIVO Flexible Plastics exists 55 years next month (17October). These are moments to pause and be grateful for. But looking to the future, the company is also turning inwards. ,,Whereas at first it was mainly literally building machines
and buildings, the organisation itself is currently quite in the doldrums," said general manager Robert Kwakman.
,,You could say that the company has always been in a strong state of flux," he continues. Currently, KIVO - started in 1966 by father Dick Kwakman (Bol) with six employees and six machines - consists of two production sites in the Netherlands (Volendam and Zwolle) and two production sites in Kosovo (one of which is a Joint Venture together with KRAS Recycling). The plant and head office at Julianaweg in Volendam has grown from 600 m2 to an area of 26,000 m2. In Volendam, the 190 employees keep the more than 44 machines running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
,,KIVO never had the ambition to be the biggest per se, but we have always wanted to play a pioneering role within our industry. As a family business, we want to continue to sustainably and successfully over future generations. This helped us, for instance, to open a location in Kosovo in 2015, in order to maintain our position even in some highly competitive markets. And especially in recent years, we have worked with great energy to make our product portfolio more sustainable. For instance, by also focusing on recycling, we have succeeded in making a lot of packaging applications more circular, reducing dependence on fossil raw materials and ensuring that valuable waste streams are reprocessed into usable recycled plastic. At the same time, sales volumes also showed nice growth every year. To make this growth and increased sustainability possible, huge sums were invested in new machines, installations, new factory halls, research and development (R&D), systems and staff.
"We need to invest in increasing knowledge, but also look at the huge workload experienced."
At the same time, several projects were under way within the production site to reduce production waste and increase output." ,,When we talk about it like this now too, we do have to admit in all honesty that all together it was quite a lot at once. This was also evident from signals we were getting more and more from the organisation, which were further clarified by independent studies in areas such as sustainable employability. A pandemic puts even more pressure on an organisation that is already demanding a lot. Such a lockdown therefore forces you as a board and MT to really listen much more deeply to that internal organisation and pay much more attention to your people, the processes, the systems and thus the overall health, quality and professionalism of your company."
,,What I think is characteristic of a family business within a close-knit community is that we have always had a hugely committed and loyal workforce. Many colleagues have remained loyal to us for 30 to 40 years. That entails that they have a wealth of knowledge and experience in their heads, and with that there is also a great problem-solving capacity, which means that everything runs continuously. We are of course enormously grateful to them for that, but there are also risks in that. So, for instance, we are now pressing ahead with better mapping out - and steering on - objectives and responsibilities. We thus see that we also need to invest further in increasing and securing knowledge, competences and training within all layers of the organisation." "More than half of the production staff indicated that they had strong doubts about whether they would be able to sustain their current work until retirement age. That is a strong signal to really look at the work and the physical load. Issues such as the regular lifting of heavy bags, rollers, rollers and axles and the many logistical movements within our factory are therefore now being addressed. Another example is the huge workload experienced in the office and within production management. Customers have become more demanding and customer packages more complex - 'We are being lived with' is something we unfortunately often hear. This indicates that we not only have to sell a lot to fill capacity, but that we also have to make smart agreements with customers and steer more on the basis of data. That has a lot of influence on the work of Sales and Planning."
,,Whereas at first we were therefore mainly literally building machines and buildings, the organisation itself is currently undergoing quite a bit of work. Within various departments we have vacancies open and already filled for further reinforcement, and with external support we are trying to further improve structures and processes. Admittedly; such changes are quite exciting and occasionally it will not immediately produce the desired effect. However, we are convinced that it is precisely because of these developments that we can once again move forward together generations." Family business KIVO continues to innovate to be able to move forward generations again.
