Spanish empties collector expands facilities and looks to increase productivity.
FBO Organisation SL, a collector of empty printer cartridges based in Barcelona, has announced that it has expanded its business by moving to larger facilities, with the company looking to increase its empties productivity and offer more services to its customers.
The new 2,000 square-metre warehouse in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Barcelona, has a storage capacity of nine metres high and is described as providing perfect conditions for loading and unloading empties.
Speaking to The Recycler about FBO’s past three years in the industry, Michel Turquet de Beauregard, CEO of the company, said: “The main challenge that we have felt since 2010 has been due to the world decline in economic activity. In fact, we saw the average price of the empty cartridges slow down regularly to stabilise in mid-2012.
“Otherwise, the Spanish remanufacturers suffered and still suffer from the unfair competition of Asiatic clones.”
Turquet added that he has noticed a decline in the number of companies operating in the industry over the years, explaining that “some of them have been concentrated through merging with other companies or absorption of complementary units for their business, while others were unable to overcome their financial difficulties”.
In terms of FBO’s strategy in overcoming these challenges, Turquet said “the challenge during those three years was to resist the gradual decline in the market price. We worked hard to adjust our purchase price to preserve the margin, rotating the stock, improving the productivity and reducing costs in all areas”.
Looking to the future, Turquet said: “Our plans for the future are clear: we must exploit all the existing ways to collect empties using marketing too, and we can do it now thanks to our bigger warehouse. We must also seize all opportunity for diversification and solidify our company. We think the collection of used mobile phones is a good example of this. We are determined that we must take action so that we will still be there the day that economic growth returns.”