A trying year in the US market drives changes in the Turbon Group and the US market.
Turbon USA has appointed Timothy Clark as Director of Sales and Marketing for North America and Simon McCouaig as CEO, effective of December 2016. Both are “experienced sales professionals” with years of experience in the OEM and aftermarket sectors, and McCouaig was previously on the company’s supervisory board, and is “well acquainted” with the Turbon Group.
Other changes within the group include relocating “a large part of the production” from the ILG site in Mexico to “locations in Romania and Thailand” and a “small series of various products for the US market” will be manufactured in York, Pennsylvania, its Turbon USA headquarters.
The changes were announced to shareholders and are in response to the ongoing decline in demand for laser cartridges, which has led to the intensified price competition in the market, and a shift of sales model, forced by the OEMs, from being just a transactional business to the sale of laser cartridges as an integrated part of a Managed Print Services (MPS) program.
Al DeLuca, Turbon’s Chairman of the Management Board, and currently responsible for the management of the US companies, will remain through to February 2017 to “ensure a proper transfer of his responsibilities and to turn to new tasks”, and the company thanked DeLuca for his efforts and wished him “all the best for his future life”.
Stefanie Unland, Editor and Publisher of The Recycler, said of the changes: “I think this is very good news, there has been too much capacity in the market for some time. Investing in growing the sales channels, especially in the North American market, which remains the largest market, globally, and where the MPS arena is strong, makes absolute sense. Combining that intensified focus while aligning and maximising manufacturing capacity reduces overheads, maximises margin and increases competiveness, and is something we have seen other companies in the market do.”