Going to visit Carinthia is a wonderful experience. Being amongst the snow-capped mountains and nature, as it starts to blossom in spring, is even more wonderful. The Italian remanufacturers that found themselves in such a beautiful place found that it refreshed both mind and body. There they met Mr. Wernhart, CEO of Embatex, to discuss remanufacturing.
It was a visit organized by CBC (Europe) Ltd that intended to give a group of printer cartridge remanufacturers the opportunity to meet a large European company. The idea for this meeting resulted from the previous visit of Mr. Wernhart to the RI3 Rimini Fair, which he attended in his role of President of ETIRA, the association of European toner and inkjet remanufacturers.
Mr. Ravelli of CBC Europe, who had organized the Italian event RI3 last October, proposed the meeting in Austria, and found his proposal immediately accepted. The meeting saw the enthusiastic participation of a dozen companies which were representative of the Italian industry – that is to say generally small companies.
In addition to the remanufacturers, Mr. Bovienzo of CBC Europe and Dr Bozzi of SSCCP (the Italian Pulp and Paper Research Institute) also attended the meeting. Dr Bozzi brought to RI3 interest surrounding the proposed MI09 control methods for print quality in toner cartridges.
In the morning of Friday March 19, the group visited Embatex and met staff from various departments. The size of this company, with its 240 staff, is something not seen in Italy and it stimulated the visitors to think about not limiting their own growth.
In the afternoon Mr. Wernhart talked about the potential of a European association like ETIRA for the whole industry. Afterwards, Dr Bozzi spoke about the MI09 method, which led to a broad discussion about how and what could be done in Italy to start to defend and promote remanufactured products.
It was felt that the first step must be to combat the imports of counterfeit products that we know to be too conspicuous. The strength of a lobbying group of remanufacturers could also ensure that the relevant European legislation on waste pays attention to the Ecodesign of cartridges and opposes the use of chips that make remanufacturers’ work difficult all over the world.
A new meeting was added to the agenda to keep the discussion of these issues moving forward and to ensure that they are both definitive and useful to Italian remanufacturers.
A facebook group was spontaneously formed, called ARITE, which proposes to continue the communication between Italian and European remanufacturers which emerged from the meeting.
Of course, it was not all about work and the evening provided an opportunity for many to relax and enjoy the local cuisine.
By all accounts the event was a positive experience from all points of view.
Written by Giovanni Ravelli, translated by Charlotte Hindle.