Simple is easier.

Mr Skonieczny, your company celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. What did the enterprise look like at the beginning?
Taja, the producer of beverages, was unable to buy enough PET bottles on the free market and therefore resolved to produce the necessary containers itself. Our company was chosen to manufacture the required blowing machines. Production started in June 1993. At the end of the 1990s, WIP sold twenty blowing machines per year.
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Today, WIP is one of Poland’s most important producers of PET bottles and preforms. How did this change happen?
There are two stories. First, the bottles: Taja didn’t need twenty blowing machines per year, which prompted WIP to go on the free market. The more presentations the company had to make, the more bottles it produced. To avoid recycling them unused, we started selling PET bottles officially. Today, we sell about 40 million bottles for milk products, wine and cosmetics.

Now to the preforms: At the height of the season our sister company Taja was short on urgently needed PET preforms. This caused the management to decide that WIP would take up production. We are now at approximately one billion per annum, corresponding to about one fifth of the Polish market.

But this isn’t all. WIP offers also film of RPET. What made you take this step?
We looked for a way to use the reject PET preforms and found the solution in the production of PET film for the FMCG market. To this end we started an operation in Zwoleń, in Eastern Poland, in 2013.
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What do the figures of WIP look like today?
Here in Aleksandrów Kujawski we have 50 employees, and and in Zwoleń we also have about 50 employees. WIP consists of the segments pharma, cosmetics and packaging. In these highly specialised areas we offer a wide range of preforms, bottles and films for beverages, milk products, FMCG and cosmetics. Ten Netstal–Otto Hofstetter AG lines run for the preform production. Seen over all segments combined, our annual sales amount to EUR 50 million.

Which are your most important markets?
The domestic market is our strength, in principle. As regards exports, the distance from our production plants is the criterion. To be competitive, we can only serve markets within a radius of 1000 to 1200 kilometres, which means Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. Some exports go also to Russia.
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Are the markets further east a possibility for WIP?
We have tried to get a foothold in these markets with some of our products. However, we find it difficult to achieve marketable prices with our top-quality products. In a mass market it will always be a problem for us to hold our own. For cosmetics it is a little different. In this area the possibilities appear to be quite positive – for example in Russia.

Major brands are among your customers. Why did these companies favour WIP?
On the one hand it is no doubt the previously mentioned safety which we can offer our customers. On the other, they appreciate our flexibility and our personal engagement. As a family-run enterprise, we are able to reach decisions within 48 hours, in spite of our size. And last but not least we watch the developments in the market very carefully and keep asking our customers what they need. This makes us a reliable partner who also thinks in the long term.

What potential does the PET business in Poland hold?
We see a saturated market as far as water, non-alcoholic beverages and milk products are concerned. Since ever more money is available to Polish households and they can afford more and more, the market will keep growing for some time. But it will be a rather reluctant growth. With the packaging articles for the cosmetics industry, on the other hand, we expect a two-digit growth rate. The industry has discovered the properties of PET and is increasingly advancing in this direction.

What developments and trends will challenge you most in future?
In the case of food packaging and bottles, our customers will intensify their efforts to reduce the quantity of raw material used. The pressure on prices and environmental aspects are driving this development. Looking at preforms, the activities will concentrate on the bottle’s neck and base. The fillers have already optimised the bottle body as far as possible. Some years ago, the trend went away from PCO 1810 to PCO 1881. We still have preforms with a 30/25 neck, but the demand for the 29/25 version grows daily.

The public is discussing the use of PET more than ever. What is the future of this material?
As already pointed out, polyethylene terephthalate has outstanding properties. Many application areas have not even been discovered yet. It doesn’t surprise me at all that the cosmetics industry is entering the field now, because PET is glossy, transparent, offers a lot of design freedom and, on top of all this, is less expensive than other types of plastic. The last and increasingly important factor is the possibility of recycling this material.
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WIP attaches much importance to quality, but it has its price. What are the arguments with which you convince your customers?
Certain customers don’t actually agree that quality has its price. In these cases we draw their attention to facts which they often overlook, such as availability, care and attention, delivery times and reliability. Moreover, we draw from 25 years of experience in blowing bottles, which gives them additional safety. Of the ones we fail to convince in the first meeting, some contact us again after a few months.

Quality is also the main focus of Otto Hofstetter AG. Is this why the Swiss enterprise is your partner?
Our cooperation started in 1998. The Italian mechanical engineering company BMB recommended us Otto Hofstetter AG.
We discovered much common ground already in our first meeting. Both companies are family-owned, rely on simple structures and can decide very quickly. What’s more, in Albert Weber we have a contact person who understands our business and takes our needs very seriously. We see him much more as a partner than a salesperson.

In the twenty years of cooperation we have come to appreci-ate not only the precision of Swiss moulds, but also their reliability and durability. In addition to that, Otto Hofstetter AG supports us in the detection of market trends and informs us of latest developments. If innovations need to be translated, we can count on our Swiss partner.

What will WIP look like in five years’ time?
Our owners rely on long-term and sustained growth. This means that we will continue to get bigger. My hope is that we can get established in the surrounding markets, since Poland is already now too small for us. We willl not rest and will keep developing new products for our customers in the areas of PET, film and cosmetics. Maybe I’m not quite as optimistic as I could be, but I foresee a bright future for WIP.

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