Francisco: Hello Feli, hello Miguel. Thank you for accepting our invitation to meet and talk today.
Feli-Miguel: Happy to meet you too, Francisco.
Francisco. I remember when we first met. I met Miguel at a working dinner after a follow-up meeting at ATT’s hearquarters in Cracow. Maybe around 2017. I still had not taken responsibility for projects in Spain, I was responsible for overseas projects. I met Feli in Barcelona at FOODTECH 2018. That was a good event!
Miguel: Right, Francisco. It was a great pleasure attending that meeting, talking to your team members and visiting your facilities was a nice experience. Thank you once again for your hospitality. In the past, CAINOX had exhibited at some trade shows such as Alimentaria, Expoquimia, Construmat, etc. But during the last years, due to the local market situation, we stopped attending shows as exhibitors. That is why FOODTECH came as a great opportunity to return to trade shows activity, specially doing it in partnership with ATT, to strengthen the customers’ awareness of your products in the Spanish market.
Francisco: That´s right, that show helped us increase our network and provided some new projects to work on. But CAINOX partnership with ATT started some years before that. How do you recall those first contacts?
Feli: CAINOX is a well-known Brand in the Spanish market, who at that time had a business partnership with a very strong international drainage supplier, delivering high quality products. When facing the process of picking a new supplier, we had to be very cautious. We met ATT at the right moment, a little bit by chance. We saw ATT as a company with a great potential, both from the technical and the commercial points of view. Your products have an optimal quality that helped us keeping CAINOX as a top drainage brand. Since 2015, we have mutually benefited from our strenghts and savoir-faire.
Francisco: That is right. And we have delivered some nice projects over the last years. Would you like to share any comments or anecdotes on some of these projects?
Feli y Miguel: Yes, we have delivered together many projects so far. In particular, we would like to mention the IBERTISSUE paper plant in Buñuel (Navarra). That was a big challenge, delivering a totally customised product, drafting so many sets of drawings. This project required a very good communication with the general contractor. After delivery, complete installation was done by the ATT service team, which stayed onsite for several weeks. Another top project that we would like to mention is the new iberic ham plant build by EL POZO in Jabugo (Huelva). This project demanded an extra technical and commercial effort to convince the customer that our proposal was the best, until he eventually placed the order. Our delivery to BS COCINADOS required a lot of flexibility in our design, many meetings with the investor and the general contractor, discussions and the extra effort to adapt to the very specific requirements of the project… We could go on mentioning other projects, but as the saying goes, “One Look Is Worth A Thousand Words”. So let us invite your blog readers to visit our website www.cainox.com, where they can find complete information and photos of our outstanding projects.
Francisco: Let me mention one more. Last year we delivered our drainage equipment to GUFRESCO. I remember there were a few critical moments too. There were so many changes in the scope of the RFQs during the offer stage. So many changes when drafting the drawings and still a few changes after drawings were approved for production, a lot of pressure regarding delivery times and installation scheduling after our delivery. This leads me to a recurrent issue for Spanish projects: the need to merge both manufacturing flexibility and very short lead times. I think some customers value this aspect more than the cost of the products itself. On the other hand, it requires a high organizational level that not all manufacturing companies can provide for. How do you approach this issue? Is not it possible to plan projects in Spain without the need to be flexible? In my opinion this situation represents an advantage for us, but it pushes us to make a remarkable additional effort.
Feli y Miguel: As you said, Francisco, lead time plays a key role for Spanish projects, particularly when some of our competitors manufacture here. Delivering a quick solution when these sudden needs arise from project execution is very important. That is why we have increased our stock of ATT standard products in the last months. Obviously, we should understand that tailor-made production comes with a longer delivery time, and we should convince our customers that in this way they will receive a higher quality product.
Francisco: Thank you for sharing your thoughts in our blog. To end with, how do you see the road ahead of us in the coming years? The situation we are going through obliged us to focus our work in a different way. In a way, we had to “reinvent ourselves”. Will we deliver to the Food and Pharma industries in the same way we have done so far? Will the approach to project design and execution change in the future?
Feli-Miguel: obviously, this COVID situation and the subsequent adjustment to a home office working scenario opened some unexplored channels to us. The same as ATT, but with a bigger focus on our distribution network, we have increased our marketing strategies and efforts. For that purpose, providing free access to the ATT’s drawing and BIM library proved to be a very useful tool.