Speaking exclusively to PrintWeek at Plockmatic Group’s open house event at its site in Riga, Latvia, chief executive Jan Marstrop said: “Things could move fast; we have been talking with some people for longer than a year or two.
"You need to have some luck or you need some other ingredients that make the deed come through and also a lot of our relationships are about building up confidence, so our ambition is to acquire, but we don’t know when it will happen.
“We have a very engaged owner in Mr Salvatore Grimaldi who is supporting all the growth that we are doing, which includes acquisitions. So we are in discussions with possible collaborators but it always takes a long time for them to conclude.”
Plockmatic expanded its portfolio of machines with its acquisitions of KGS Bindery, which had been supplying a range of its PUR binding products exclusively to Morgana for the previous five years, and Milton Keynes-based Morgana, which also took the company into the offline bookletmaking market.
“Before the acquisition of Morgana, we were to a large degree selling inline equipment. We decided we had to start increasing our offline portfolio and sales,” said Marstrop.
“Morgana also has a very strong brand name so by utilising its distribution capacity and the brand strength that they have, we have also seen good growth in our traditional Plockmatic products.”
Marstrop also announced that Plockmatic will be looking to streamline the Morgana brand under the Plockmatic Group brand in the near future.
He said: “We try to promote ourselves as the Plockmatic Group and until this year at Drupa we have been more like offline distribution as Morgana, inline as Plockmatic and then mailing separately, but now we will try to combine that under one umbrella, the Plockmatic Group, and approach the customer from that point of view.”
The open house event also brought together delegates from the International Printers Network (IPN) for its annual conference.
The IPN helps print companies globally to connnect when looking to outsource. Founded in 1993, it has more than 200 locations worldwide.
Also on show at the event were machines from a number of Plockmatic’s partners, including CP Bourg, Uchida and Vivid Technologies.
Plockmatic employs 55 people in its Swedish headquarters and 88 in Riga.
Last year, it turned over 473m SEK (£42m) and it is aiming for 500m SEK by the end of this calendar year, following its 2012-devised K2500 plan to have reached 500m SEK turnover by 2017. Marstrop said the group is well on course for this.
It opened up its secondary premises in Latvia in 2001 but relocated to its current factory three years ago.
