Transforming the way food is processed – globally

Global reach for global customers

The global nature of today’s food value chain means that significant advances and new technologies in food production need to be global in order to effect lasting change. To fulfill Marel’s vision to transform the way food is processed, we have established global reach with strong regions and a solid local presence. Our local teams make it possible to work closely with our customers and to understand local markets and trends, which has moreover proven essential during the Covid pandemic.

Underpinning Marel’s global reach is the structure of our business, designed to serve our global customers in the fish, meat and poultry processing industries, as well as a growing number in alternative proteins. Local staff of 40 nationalities, based in 30 countries, speak a myriad of languages with customers in more than 140 countries: the largest installed base in our industry.

With global teams innovating and developing our technology, and a global supply chain with 15 manufacturing sites across the continents, we can support customers and scale up quickly when required.

Our global network of around 2,200 sales and service employees is essential for customers and great for business, with 40% of our revenue currently in aftermarket, i.e. spare parts, services and service contracts. Our customers range from large international leaders to local processors and our customer retention is exceptional. Our global reach is crucial for maintaining long-term customer relationships as well as for building Marel’s customer base as we and our customers explore new markets.

For Marel, the ability to use a combination of face-to-face and remote operators out in the field made it easier for the organization to operate as the global Covid pandemic took hold. We’d already structured the organization for global reach and our global network gives us the agility to ride the waves when any fluctuations in the market occur or unexpected events threaten to disrupt the food value chain.

Accelerating automation to navigate the pandemic

The pandemic tested the resilience of our global reach and prompted Marel to take its digital approach even further and faster. Existing customer needs were the immediate priority – with many service people grounded by travel restrictions and ever stricter lockdowns within many food production facilities – but Marel also had to keep up its sales and marketing activities, its employee engagement, shareholder obligations, ESG responsibilities, not to mention its innovation and manufacturing activities.

We had to help our customers navigate the pandemic through more automated digital solutions, and we had to come up with digital solutions for our own activities too.

The revolutionary innovations Marel delivers to customers tend to get the spotlight – in the past year or so these have included innovations such as the RoboBatcher Thermoformer, the M-Line Robot, SensorX Magna and the I-Cut 610 PortionCutter.

Increasingly, Marel products assume a high level of automated data management. They help customers automate processes, saving time and money, as well as satisfy the high expectations of today’s consumers for food safety and traceability. Automation has the obvious benefit of reducing product handling too – for better product quality and better food safety, which has become an ever-greater priority since the pandemic began.

As for the inner workings of business at Marel, automation and digitalization were already key tools. From headsets to enhance global teamwork, to robots in Marel’s own manufacturing facilities, the pandemic accelerated the need to be at the forefront of digital in everything we do.

Our global face

Global reach is the fabric on which we weave deep, long-term customer relationships. The Marel persona goes out of its way to be responsive, reliable and trustworthy. It is dedicated to creating and nurturing the customer relationship and aims to be the food processing technology partner of choice, anywhere in the world.

To become the global partner of choice, you need to claim pole position in a number of spheres, such as building local knowledge, delivering quality solutions and maintaining those products for their entire lifecycle. Marel continuously works to remain at the forefront in these spheres.

To build local knowledge, for example, Marel needs to get to know the customers, the local market and even end consumers – the customers’ customers. Trade shows have been a traditional platform for exchanging knowledge and nurturing customer relationships, both locally and globally, but it’s possible such populous events will never fulfill this purpose to the same extent in a post-pandemic world.

In addition to having staff located in 30 countries, Marel helps solve this by running demonstrations – live, online and extended reality (XR) – at its own demonstration facilities in Europe, the Americas and now in Asia too.

Marel demo centers strengthen our ability to support customers, partners and the broader food processing industry in the respective country and region, as well as globally. They make it easier to provide hands-on experience of Marel machinery and software in a controlled factory environment during training, demonstrations, and other events, and encourage the exchange of knowledge, where customers interact with product specialists as well as front line sales and service.

Conversations at our demo centers can be starting points for new innovations, collaborations and partnerships. Innovation through partnership is not just a catchphrase at Marel – building these relationships is vital to Marel fulfilling its mission to transform the way food is processed. 

Marel’s strong global reach is greater than its global presence. It relies as much on what we offer – value-enhancing solutions, local knowledge, installation and service expertise – as it does on who we are – persistent innovators, reliable partners, dependable service technicians, to name just a few.

To learn more about global reach at Marel, tune into the second event in our Capital Markets Day °360 series 18 November, with speakers including Ulrika Lindberg, EVP Global Markets and Service, and Gudbjorg Heida Gudmundsdottir, EVP Fish.