Inkmaker Group rebranded as IM Group
The decision to rebrand Inkmaker Group as IM GROUP aligns with the group’s vision, of evolving its technology to expand in its fields and adapt, the advantages of its products, to new markets.
‘Since October 2019, Inkmaker has made significant investments, on the acquisitions of the businesses of Rexson and Valtech, in UK; Tecnopails, in Italy; and most recently Swesa, in Germany. The driving strategy behind these acquisitions was to create a reliable complete supply chain—serving predominantly, but not only, the ink, paint and coatings industry—to sustain our core businesses,’ explained Christophe Rizzo, CEO EMEA/Americas, IM GROUP.
This meant restructuring the group’s brands into various specialities, yet to still function as one strong force, hence the need to rebrand the existing Inkmaker Group brand, to have an identity of its own, as an autonomous holding brand positioned as a “Total Solutions Provider”. As Rizzo highlighted, ‘this is the evolution of Inkmaker Group, which is essentially that of Inkmaker.’
Gianluca Incerti, Global Commercial Director, IM GROUP explained that this was one of the key reasons for forming IM GROUP. ‘Our strategy is to create “areas of excellence” dedicating each of our brands to a specific expertise. In this way each brand still works individually, with its existing clients in its own markets, and when required shares that expertise—offering Total Solutions—when for example, working on large turn-key plant engineering projects. This guarantees resource optimisation and high flexibility to manage projects of all sizes.’
With the restructure of IM GROUP’s brands—Inkmaker will focus on ink dispensing and software design; Rexson will be predominantly for paint as well as liquid ink, Vale-Tech will focus on narrow-web and paste-ink dispensing; Swesa mainly for; food, pharmaceutical, corrugated packaging, cosmetics and more; Teko will remain in POS Tinting and R&D Training and; Tecnopails for Filling Solutions.
The new identity—inspired from the Inkmaker logo—was designed by the group’s inhouse corporate communications division, THINK. ‘The focal point of IM GROUP’s new logo is a symbol of a face created from a series of triangles, that like the many brands and skills of our Group, converge to form a strong whole—a distinct “human identity”—depicting a technological engineering leader with a “human touch”. The face is embellished with a crown, representing the Group’s determination to maintain its leading position in the industries it serves,’ explained Silvio Cimenti, Global Director of Branding, Marketing and Communications, IM Group, ‘The Colour of Trust”— the Group’s credo— is a result of its core values of being Truthful, Responsible, Understanding, Safe and Tailormade to ultimately position the group, as the leader you can T R U S T.’
Great attention was given to the name “IM”, acronyms deriving from the name “Inkmaker”, which are steeped in history as Valentina Cigna, Global Director of HR and President of IM GROUP outlined, ‘they recall not only Inkmaker—as the founder of the group—but also those who, in 1987 founded Inkmaker; Carlo Musso, Luciano Longobardi and—especially for me—my father, Giuliano Cigna. He would have been very proud of this moment.’
