Customer service key to Maxcor success

Despite Brazil’s well-publicized economic woes, Maxcor, a label converter based in Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais, expects sales growth of 15 percent in 2016 and has seen 50 percent cumulative growth over the last four years.

These impressive figures are the result of a flurry of investment in new machinery four years ago, a philosophy of excellent customer service, and the charismatic leadership of Maxcor’s director Alexandre Lodi – who took sole charge of the company in 2011.

Maxcor was founded in 1990 by Alexandre Lodi, his uncle Estevam Amaral and cousin Marcos Amaral, as a printer of simple supermarket pricing labels – a booming market thanks to inflation in the local economy causing prices to change regularly.

The company moved into prime label production in 1995 with the installation of an 8-color Mark Andy 2200 flexo press. A second followed in 1999; today, Maxcor runs ten such machines, as well as a Mark Andy XP5000 – more presses from the US manufacturer than any other converter in Latin America.

With the new focus on prime labels, the original part of the business was divested and taken on by an employee. Further changes to the business’s structure came in 2006, with the departure of Estevam Amaral, and in 2011, when Marcos Amaral’s exit left Alexandre Lodi in sole charge.

In a deliberate shift from the company’s previous strategy, whereby it installed new presses only after securing additional clients, Lodi splashed out in 2012 on three Mark Andy 2200s – a 13in 8-color machine, and two 10-color presses of 13in and 17in web widths respectively. Three Rotoflex finishing machines also arrived, taking their total to nine – all with Alis inspection systems from Nikka – and Maxcor’s factory floor was reorganized to improve workflow.