Goss Reorganizes, Shedding French Subsidiary

DURHAM, NH—Rick Nichols, president and CEO of Goss International, announced a reorganization of the company earlier this week. Goss will focus on continuing to serve existing customers and growing market share in the company’s core markets, while expanding into new, neighboring product markets where it has a technological competitive advantage.

“The needs of our customers have shifted over recent years as our industry environment as a whole has changed,” explained Nichols, in a prepared statement. “The markets to drive our future growth and profitability are shifting. We have decades of offset printing expertise. That gives us a significant advantage not just in our core newspaper and commercial printing sectors, but in other industries like packaging and emerging printing industries as well. Together, these are the reasons why we are transforming as a company.”

Nine months after his appointment, Nichols confirmed that Goss is making three key changes to the way it does business to achieve this. Firstly, the company’s organizational structure will be simplified. Goss will be organized around regional parts, service and support centers for customers.

Secondly, as part of the change in the organizational structure, Goss will bring its existing operations in Europe in line with this new structure to become one unified, pan-continental sales and service organization. As a result, Goss International France has become financially untenable and unsustainable.

Goss International France has entered insolvency proceedings via a judicial reorganization process. According to Nichols, Goss International Corp. and its subsidiaries outside France are not affected by this procedure and continue to operate as normal, while strong support has been put in place for customer orders already in motion in France.

Goss still maintains press manufacturing capabilities in Durham, NH, and in China.

Thirdly, Goss will continue to diversify its product portfolio to drive revenues in markets where the company’s technology and engineering expertise give it a competitive edge. Goss has already made significant inroads into the multi-billion dollar packaging market and will continue to target growth in this industry. The company will also examine other industries where it has technological expertise.

“Packaging is an attractive industry where Goss’ technology gives it a competitive advantage,” he added. “I’m pleased that we’ve already made inroads into this market with our Vpak products, but we will be expanding more aggressively in this sector, as well as researching and entering other new markets where we hold a competitive advantage.”

The first Vpak packaging press was installed at Precision Press in North Mankato, MN, which is part of Taylor Corp.

In a brief phone interview with Printing Impressions, Nichols stressed the need to simplify the organization and become more localized around its customer base (including in growth markets like Latin America, especially Brazil). He said it also entails leveraging the back end, such as financing, HR and spare parts.