Maarten Heijbroek - One year as CEO, and counting...

What were your impressions during your first few months at Stahl?

Stahl is a very strong company in many respects. It has a world-leading market position, fantastic technology, and a highly driven and entrepreneurial workforce. These are the qualities that first led me to Stahl, and the company has more than met my expectations on each of these areas.

What are your main takeaways from the year as a whole? 

It has certainly been challenging at times, but I’m really happy with what we’ve achieved together this past year. As a business, we’ve had to cope with huge amounts of uncertainty: the conflict in Ukraine, significant cost inflation, and supply chain disruptions. We are proud that we managed to keep our customers supplied, albeit with occasional delays, across the world. Our well-developed global manufacturing footprint and supply chain served us well.

Of course, these challenges are not unique to Stahl; everyone in our industry is affected. Stahl is a resilient organization, and we’ve adapted successfully so far. I’m confident that we’re well positioned to face whatever comes next as long as we maintain our agile and flexible approach.

You’ve visited almost every single Stahl manufacturing site; you’ve talked to employees, customers, and suppliers. How do you view the market landscape based on these experiences? 

Everywhere I go, the recurring theme is sustainability. It’s now the highest priority for our customers and our customers’ customers.

We consider ourselves a sustainability leader here at Stahl, and we’ve always been one step ahead when it comes to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics. Our proactive mindset will continue to set us apart from our competitors – our aim is not simply to meet our customers’ demands, but to anticipate on their future needs.

Our commitment to sustainability is demonstrated by our recent innovations in the field of renewable feedstock coatings and finishes – for example, Stahl Ympact^® and Stahl NuVera^®. We’re also investing in resources that will help accelerate our leading position in ESG. We’ve grown our ESG team with people who will dedicate their time to key areas such as supply chain transparency, life cycle assessments, and environmental excellence. We’ve also invested in an Open Innovation team, to connect Stahl to innovation taking place at universities and start-ups. 

Do you have any concerns going forward? 

The high level of uncertainty we’re seeing in the world is here to stay. At Stahl we need to remain agile in dealing with new challenges, like we successfully did with COVID-19. For our industry, and many others, a key challenge will be the availability of technical talent, which is crucial for a knowledge-intensive company like Stahl. This is one of the reasons we launched the Stahl Campus training institute six years ago, and we now have partnerships with four centers of learning around the world. These collaborations enable us to help university students, as well as our customers’ young talents and other interested parties, develop essential technical skills for coatings and surface treatments for flexible substrates.

A little under eight years from now, Stahl will celebrate its 100th anniversary. How do you see the company evolving in the years to come? 

Even more so than today, I see Stahl at the heart of a truly sustainable value chain. We want to be the go-to innovation partner for the various stakeholders across our value chain and continue to touch millions of consumers around the world every day. More on this soon!