Wood & Panel

Javier Liria

Javier Liria

In an exclusive interview with with Apratim Ghoshal, editor-in-chief, Wood & Panel during Magna Expomueblera Mexico, Javier Liria, Commercial Director, Venjakob Spain and Latin America speaks on the show, business and new opportunities, products and lot more.

woodandpaneleurope How do you see MEM Industrial as a platform to promote spray painting and coating line innovation?
 

Javier Liria: This is our third time in this exhibition. In my opinion, the quality of customers was not very high in the last edition. This is because; Venjakob needs a particular kind of customer who has very high need of production in the finishing field. We expect this year, because we can agree that the exhibition has grown to a most professional one, we are expecting to receive these kind of customers and we think it’s a very good platform to penetrate this market.

woodandpaneleurope After this show, what kind of new business and new opportunities do you expect to grow in the market?
Javier Liria: Tradeshows and exhibitions are good platforms to explain our projects to search and to find a right partner who would co-operate in our market. This means, we expect to find a good dealer, a person who has an interest about this market. We are searching one for in this market, because we have already been successful in Latin American markets like Brazil, Chile, and of course Mexico. But we still have some unopened opportunities in these markets. So, what we expect is this, to find the right quality customers, professional customers who can co-operate with us to develop the market but we need to work out on these plans after the exhibition.
woodandpaneleurope It has been already 20 years since Venjakob is working in American market with the North American counterpart. Can you briefly tell us about the response from this region? How has been the feedback for Ven Spray Smart in the Mexican market?
Javier Liria: In Mexican market, to start with that, we have been successful for the last 20 years. However, the wood industry and furniture industry we have not been so successful because you need a good partner to be present everyday here and we are unable to find this partner yet because as market, Mexican market is good because we are able to serve our Venjakob installation in other sectors like automotive sector and industry sector. So, we know that there is potential. It is just to find the right or I can say again the quality customer. This exhibition needs a lot of good customers, so my opinion would be; exhibition is not just an exhibition but a platform of having lot of good quality customers who have interest in production.

Talking about Ven Spray Smart, as I have already told you that since the last 20 years we have not been very successful in particularly Mexico but we have sold many smart machines in the United States, in Brazil Canada, Chile and Argentina. Ven Spray Smart is a very good machine for a small company who want to make the first step in automation of the finishing in their companies. So, excepting Mexico we have been successful in this market.

woodandpaneleurope So, what your customers basically do?
Javier Liria: We have customers in Latin America producing kitchen interiors, shop interiors and also from fittings industry. We have customers doing painting (industrial) for other companies as we offer customers paint materials for decoration like roof panels, flooring and various sectors of wood and panels and also automotive industry and the industry overall.
woodandpaneleurope We can see Mexico is getting more advanced in the woodworking field, what will be future of Mexican wood industry after five years you feel?
Javier Liria: As the part of the success of our sales in Latin America from last three-four years is to be able to sell to the customer not only the paint quality but also the energy production, paint production with reduced time -things like spend less time on cleaning and so on. When the customer wants this paint, you have to pay a little bit more to have this cost reduction. So, I think Mexico is developing in that way as we had a few visitors are asking for these type of things- they think about reducing the cost in their finishing procedure like less energy, less waste, less cleaning system, less cleaning materials etc. Nowadays we produce painting lines, that are not so flexible but with our technology we create the flexibility needed to do short productions, now we have to sell lines or system that can be very flexible has the ability to change colour very quickly.

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