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On 1 September, our CEO Peter Mertens will be transitioning from his current role to a position on the IGS GeboJagema strategic advisory board. This move marks the end of a chapter in the IGS story, as well as the beginning of a new one. Peter joined our company in 1984 as a hard metal grinding specialist and became CEO in 2001, leading us over the last 22 years towards where we stand today. The transformation our organisation went through in that time is massive. This is the story of how Peter Mertens and the rest of the IGS GeboJagema team turned a modest tool shop into a global, market-leading healthcare mould maker, touching the lives of billions of people every day. Peter: “It’s been a bumpy ride, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Early Years
The story of IGS’ transformation starts well before Peter Mertens took over as CEO in 2001. Eighteen years earlier, in the fall of 1983, a 25-year-old Peter came in for a job interview at IGS. He met with owners Rob Mols and Jan Mannaerts, the sons of the original founders of IGS. At the time, the organisation manufactured moulds, dies, instruments and tools for a range of markets, including packaging, electronics and the automotive industry. The interview went well, though there was some disagreement on Peter’s wage. “I had just gotten married,” he recalls. “I wanted to earn more so I could start a family.” As soon as Peter arrived home from the interview, he received a call from Rob Mols. “He told me he’d agree to a higher wage, but I’d better prove that I was worth it!”
And so, on 1 January 1984, Peter started at the bottom of the ladder, as a hard metal grinding specialist. But it didn’t take long for him to start climbing that ladder. Six months after Peter started, the factory manager fell ill, and Mols and Mannaerts asked if Peter would step in. “My first thought was: no way,” says Peter. “I was unaware that I had any leadership capabilities, so I was hesitant.” However, Rob Mols thought Peter could breathe fresh life into the company operations and convinced him. It didn’t take long for the first challenges to arrive. “The four older department heads were disappointed that a youngster like me took on the position,” Peter explains. But he was determined to push through the tension and resistance. Though it meant ruffling some feathers, he eventually won over the team and would be factory manager for years to come.
One of the first unique selling points of today’s IGS was already part of the company during that time. The owners Mols and Mannaerts believed that innovation was key. “We weren’t afraid to invest heavily into innovation,” Peter says. “The tool shop featured the newest, high-end machines.” That innovative spirit also led Peter and Rob Mols to spearhead an initiative to introduce automation and robotics in the tool shop. “We were probably one of the first tool shops in the world to do so, because almost no one believed in automation at the time.” IGS started by automating EDM, as well as milling electrodes for EDM. “That willingness to invest in innovation was one of the greatest strengths of IGS, even back then.”
A new strategy
Towards the end of the century, IGS made a steady profit, year after year. But under the surface, the company was vulnerable. “We operated in many markets with razor thin margins,” Peter recalls. “The exception was the semiconductor business, which we relied on heavily to remain profitable.” This reliance became apparent when the semiconductor market experienced a downturn during the economic dip of the late nineties. IGS took a hit from this, prompting the company to re-evaluate its strategy. During this period, Peter became more and more involved in the company’s strategy and future, culminating in him taking the reins as CEO in 2001.
His plans for IGS? “Focus has always been a keyword for me,” Peter explains. “We decided to stop producing tools, instruments and dies to focus entirely on injection moulds.” As part of that move, Peter also took a decision that raised quite a few eyebrows. He purchased an injection moulding machine. At the time, it was common practice for mould manufacturers to perform a simple ‘first out of tool’ test and for customers to handle the validation on their own. Peter: “They would have to interrupt their production process for the validation, and if modifications were needed, the mould had to be shipped back and forth to the mould maker. In short: it was a hassle for customers, who wanted to focus on production. I believed we could add value by handling the validation.” Looking back, this might look like a natural move. But it took a while for customers to get on board. “We hardly used the injection moulding machine in the first year after buying it,” Peter remembers. “But I was certain it was the right move.”
Secondly, Peter also reconsidered what markets IGS should serve: “For years, we built one-off moulds, with only two or four cavities. The problem is that this involves development costs and risk for every single mould you manufacture, as each new mould requires a new prototype.” Instead, Peter wanted to enter high-volume markets so that IGS could start producing repeat moulds. That’s when IGS turned its focus on a new market: healthcare. The company doubled down on its innovative spirit, investing heavily in the engineering department as well as top-notch production equipment. Nonetheless, the move into the healthcare market was a lengthy uphill battle. “It took years of knocking on doors,” says Peter. “It was challenging because we were still a modest-sized company and many healthcare clients preferred to work with larger, more established competitors. But we stayed the course.”
The new IGS GeboJagema
Slowly but surely, IGS started to take in more orders from the healthcare market. And then the financial crisis of 2008 hit, leading to a worldwide recession. This proved challenging for IGS. To continue on its ambitious path under those tough market conditions, the company needed new ownership. Peter got in touch with the VADO investment group, who acquired IGS. With plans to eventually merge with another tool shop in their group, VADO renamed our company to IGS GeboJagema. “That merger never happened, but the name stuck. So ever since, we’ve been known as the company with the funny name,” Peter laughs.
Yet two short years later, at the start of 2011, another merger did take place. IGS GeboJagema joined forces with HTP Tooling: an organisation focused on the optical market. “HTP Tooling was active in the contact lens business: a high volume and high quality market. It fit perfectly with what we already did.” Moreover, with their experience in the optical market HTP Tooling brought a new level of accuracy and precision to IGS GeboJagema, as well as a new home: our factory moved into their clean and modern facilities in Eindhoven, where we are still located today.
As a new company structure was set up after the merger, the management structure at IGS GeboJagema also evolved. Until that point, Peter had shouldered a significant number of responsibilities on his own. He recollects, “I did too many things alone and had a tendency to involve myself in every minute detail.” However, recognizing the need for a broader management team, Peter took the initiative to form the team that is still in place today with Christel Wolferink, Rob van den Brand, Rob Doorakkers and Hans Arts. “It required some adjustment on my part, but I was committed to giving them my full trust and letting them run the show. I haven’t regretted that decision for even one second.”
Breaking through in the healthcare market
In hindsight, 2011 proved to be the year that the ‘new’ IGS GeboJagema took off. HTP Tooling’s extreme levels of accuracy and precision proved to be a winning combination with IGS GeboJagema’s pursuit of automation and innovation and the strong focus on the Healthcare industry. “We focused heavily on adding value for our customers in every way imaginable,” says Peter. “We went above and beyond in our validation process, providing exact process settings for the best results. Through innovative engineering we minimised cycle times, which significantly improved our customers’ output. And through early involvement in projects, we could leverage our knowledge and expertise to make projects more successful down the line.”
From that point on, more and more larger healthcare projects started coming in, which meant that the tool shop also started producing an increasing number of repeat moulds. Peter’s new management team decided the next logical step would be to further focus the tool shop on the critical parts of the mould, i.e. the components that come into contact with plastic. Non-critical parts would be acquired from third parties. Peter: “This focus on critical parts allowed us to standardise the machines in our factory. In turn, that made it possible to automate the entire manufacturing process, from start to finish, transforming the factory into an Industry 4.0 production environment.” By heavily automating the tool shop, our organisation’s production capacity also increased significantly. This was another important step in carving out a space in the healthcare market. It made IGS GeboJagema a suitable partner for larger organisations that needed more capacity and stability from their suppliers.
“Luck was also an important factor in our rapid growth since 2011,” Peter reflects. In particular, he points out the shift in the industry towards platforms, where medical devices are no longer developed from the ground up, but are based on a similar device. “This development fits perfectly with our focus on smart engineering, automation and repeatability,” Peter says. “Also, we have accuracy and the capacity to produce the enormous volumes required for these projects.”
The future of IGS GeboJagema
As Peter Mertens passes on the baton of CEO to Herman Rusch, he looks towards the future with great optimism. “I couldn’t have asked for a better conclusion to my tenure as CEO. We are not tied to a specific market, and we have a diversified client base. This year, our revenue is projected to reach a record-breaking high, over six times our 2011 results. And according to our order book, 2024 shows even more promise, indicating at least another 15% growth in revenue.” He sees many promising opportunities for IGS GeboJagema on the horizon. This includes the opening of our new facility in the United States, the continued growth of platform-based devices, artificial intelligence, as well as several impactful market developments. “For example, I expect customers might seek to bring assembly closer to the mould, which presents new complexity and exciting challenges to us.”
What Peter believes were the key ingredients for IGS GeboJagema’s success? “Focus, a strong team, luck, and the courage to take bold actions,“ he states. “It’s been an extraordinary journey with an incredible team, filled with amazing people. Despite the challenges, the ride has been exhilarating. IGS GeboJagema is a tremendous company, and as I pass the torch, I am certain that under Herman’s leadership, the best is yet to come.”
