Świat DRUKU: You are celebrating jubilee of Mimaki Europe this year. Can you tell us your story of Mimaki Europe?

Mike Horsten: Mimaki Europe was established in April 2004 in Amsterdam with a very small group of people and took over the distribution that was at that time done by company in Switzerland, called Kimoto. The company Kimoto was already supplying Mimaki printers to the European market some years before. The establishment of Mimaki Europe, which is a full, 100% subsidiary of Mimaki Engineering, grew into more and more people giving sales, marketing and tech support all over Europe. 5 years ago we acquired one of our distributors in Germany and Mimaki Deutschland became part of the family. Today it’s Europe, Middle East and Africa. Middle East and Africa joined to us last April, one year back, and we’re now responsible for this big territory from Russia to Iceland, from Norway to South Africa.

If you look at our company today, we’re now doing one third turnover of total Mimaki. We’re growing with more than 20% in the year organically. We do currently about 1/3 of the Mimaki turnover worldwide. Our turnover for this year is estimated between 270 and 300 mln Euros (it’s always a little bit complicated and difficult to say, because of the changes of the rate of the Yen), when Mimaki Europe did about 100 mln for the last fiscal year.

SD: What trends do you observe in global markets?

MH: At first, I cannot comment on the global market, because I’m only in charge of Europe, Middle East and Africa. Mimaki is a very straightforward company: you have Asia, Japan, you have Europe, Africa and Middle East, and of course the Americas. We know a little bit from each other, but we don’t share a lot of information because every market is different. So what is successful in USA doesn’t need to be successful here. And the other way round. We do act global but act local.

Globally you see a couple things happening. A growth of specialty labels and commercial printing graphic sector – that is why this year in Munich we are presenting a new large format UV flatbed printer the Mimaki JFX200 that is capable of compeating with all the currently available printers in the market. We also see need for more car wrapping solutions – that’s why we introduced a fast roll to roll UV printer with 5 year 3M outdoor warranty the Mimaki UJV500, and of course there is still the need for higher production speeds for an affordable price – that’s why we introduced the brand new Mimaki JV300 solvent roll-to-roll printer at Fespa. I think that the global trends today is more production, more reliability, better equipment, making sure your software is included (not separate software), making sure that the technical part is done right and when you have technical problem there is a solution. In my opinion those are the important things.

SD: Mimaki for years has been developing new technologies and introducing them to the market. In which way are the changes and improvements of Mimaki going?

MH: If you’re realistic, Mimaki has always been the first bringing new products. We were the first with a solvent printer, we were the first with a technological printing, with the textile printing, with a small format flatbed, with a UV large format LED flatbed etc. Mimaki has always been the front runner of new technologies. With the next generation JV300, the machine that we have just announced, we have for example droplet detection – one of many technologies that comes from really big industrial machines but now is in an affordable machine. So we have introduced technologies in our bigger industrial machines that we are now putting down in small machines which is a huge benefit for the end user, because he now is getting better quality, higher speeds for the same price that he is used to buy the machines.

So it’s not always to bring totally new technology, but to take the technology and make it better. When you look at JV33: we launched JV33 six years ago and it’s the best selling solvent printer ever. Six months ago we announced the enhanced version. So, instead of letting everybody down that bought a printer, we decided to update the machine and to help grow the companies using it, make the same machine faster, make the same machine better at no cost. So, older users got the upgrade, got the software, upgraded themselves, and they have a better machine than they used to have, although it’s an older machine. This is a policy of Mimaki: helping out customers, being close to them, making sure theirs investment pays off.

SD: Thank you for the interview. We wish you further successes and many fruitful decades of Mimaki!