The value of flexibility in primary packaging

The packaging industry district in the Emilia-Romagna region, also known as the packaging valley, is the heart of an area with the highest number of packing and packaging machines manufacturers in Europe. Continuous innovation, top quality workers and flexibility are the factors that enable those companies to stay competitive on the world market, where Italy, together with Germany is top of the market.

Among these companies, Opem, a historic Emilian company, designs and makes primary packaging processing systems, today mainly working as a specialist in the coffee industry.

History of a coffee dedicated italian excellence

Established fifty years ago in Parma in the pasta industry, later on Opem began to be involved in packaging, not just as regards pasta or biscuits, but also in packaging of granular and dry products.

In the ‘80’ the company began to collaborate with mega brands and over the years it enlarged its horizon abroad, where nowadays number of companies choose to go with Opem to get complete lines and systems.

“We began to work in the pasta industry with Barilla, we worked with Giovanni Rana, then we reached the coffee industry with Kimbo”, states Ombretta Sarassi, Opem general manager.

Flexibility and full customisation: the corner stones of a winning strategy

The arrival of pods and capsules in the coffee industry, with a strongly rising market, offered Opem the opportunity to grow and expand thanks to its foresight and to a range of highly flexible systems, that can suit and meet a client’s requirements.

Apart from a top know how of industrial systems, Opem’s strength is its capacity to interface with any suppliers, upstream and downstream of the supply chain without bars to partnerships.

Such a flexibility enables the company to make complete lines and offer highly customised, advanced packaging solutions, one would consider unconceivable in certain contexts.

A long experience of customisation and the typical swift character of a small-medium company, enable Opem to reduce engineering costs, hence being able to offer quality solutions even to small businesses.

Furthermore, its capacity to offer compact packaging lines, in great demand by manufacturers. Again, thanks to flexibility, care for innovation and an artisan’s approach, Opem can offer highly customised layouts.