Founded in 1996 on November 1st, MPS Systems celebrates their 25th anniversary this year. The company reflects on its history and where they are today.
The company’s history began 25 years ago when Bert van den Brink and Eric Hoendervangers, two former employees of Stork (SPG prints today), started their own business to develop an improved flexo press. Together with Henk Wientjens, also a former Stork colleague, they founded Multi Print Systems.
The MPS founders were pioneers in the world of narrow web flexo printing, inventing the first servo-driven flexo press. In 1997, the trio sold their first machine to a Swedish printing house, and this very first press is still running production today.
High quality and innovation
While the company grew and professionalized over the years, it maintained high quality and innovation as their core values today. Van den Brink: “Innovation is in our DNA. It used to be about finding the best technologies, now it’s about continuous improvement. We’ll never stop improving our unparalleled solutions.”
Henk Wientjes, who was head of R&D since the beginning, retired in 2019. Eric Hoendervangers and Bert van den Brink are currently in advisory roles and stepping back from daily operations as of January 2022. They are still highly valued within the company.
Atze Bosma, CEO of MPS said: “We are extremely grateful for our founding fathers, especially for their efforts they took to get MPS where we are today. Without them, we would never have had such a beautiful, successful company with the best quality products.”
Global expansion
MPS began in a small garage in 1996, moved in 1997 to a larger location in Nijmegen, and had the opportunity in 1999 to take over the Sloka machine factory in Didam. The Sloka employees were welcomed into the MPS family, and today, a few current employees have a combined work history extending 25 years. Van den Brink: “It’s an honour to still have such a loyal group of employees with us from the very start.”
Over the years, MPS expanded to locations in Germany, the UK, North America and Asia. Together with a vast network of agents, MPS sells and services presses around the world.
Eric Hoendervangers, the commercial force within the founding trio said: “Having over 800 of our machines running production across the globe is more than we could have ever dreamt back in 1996. I’m proud of where we are today, and I trust our ‘baby’ to be in good hands with our current board; Atze Bosma as CEO and Michiel Borst as CFO. I look forward to seeing our company grow even bigger and more successful in the future.”
Connect to Grow
Being known for high quality and operator-focused innovations, MPS added more value to their proposition by focusing not only on productivity, but on their customer’s entire performance. In June of this year, MPS launched their new branding and message: Connect to Grow.
Bosma: “Having an MPS press means you have a golden tool to be extremely productive and efficient as a company. But in practice, we see machines not being used to their full potential. To change this, we’re showing our customers how to improve by giving them access to unbiased, factual data coming from the printing press.
“Our customers can choose to have advice from our expert team of Data Analysts and Print Managers, so they can learn how to improve their press productivity; for example, in shortening changeover times and lowering waste.”
MPS likes to compare label and packaging printing with Formula 1, where data is also closely measured and used to improve performance. Bosma: “We’ll help our customers get to Pole Position, but it’s up to them to win the race!”
Celebrating an anniversary milestone
MPS’ silver jubilee year will begin with a celebration on the official anniversary date of November 1st, where the company will have an internal celebration with employees and the three founding fathers.
Bosma: “We’re excited to kick-off an anniversary year with big and smaller events, together with our employees, customers, suppliers and the industry.”
