Interview with Gabriel Grabowski Commercial Director CONTENUR POLAND

Gabriel Grabowski, Commercial Director CONTENUR POLAND, gives his vision about the Polish waste market.

– CONTENUR founded their Polish branch in 2011 and started manufacturing containers in Poland in 2012. You joined the company in 2015. What do you think of how the image of CONTENUR brand and products has changed in Poland in the last few years?

G: For many years Polish waste containers market was dominated by German products. Remarkable number of potential customers did not trust that Spanish brand containers manufactured in Poland could be as good as those imported from Germany. It was clear that quality and durability of waste containers was very important to them. Therefore Polish Sales Team (supported by Research & Development, Quality and Production Departments) focused on informing customers how quality of raw materials, components, production process and final products was monitored by CONTENUR.

Instead of arguing on which quality certificate or certification body was better, we explained the importance and meaning of parameters checked by auditors issuing quality confirmation documents. In addition to that our business partners were provided with very good technical support and well-coordinated logistics. Finally the products defended themselves during exploitation. Nowadays our customers in Poland are confident that CONTENUR brand is a synonym of reliability.

– What are the main factors that have influenced development of CONTENUR’s position in the market? What is CONTENUR’s offer for Polish customers?

G: Some might say that Poland is a market of basic products as low price is always important factor influencing purchase decision. Such opinion is not quite true. Indeed people in Poland do not want to spend money on things that do not provide any functionality. However they are open to buy customized products if they believe in benefits of the solution. CONTENUR brand offers flexible and tailored systems that respond to needs of customers. If you want to make sure that it’s well known whom the container belongs to, we will mark it with your logo using hot-print technology. If users segregating wastes want to keep clean hands, we will equip your products with special openings. If you need financial support, we will help you find the right lease company and provide your containers with durable serial numbers requested by the financial institution.

If you are tired of losing RFID chips when emptying containers, we will tag them during production process (when the chip nest is still warm and more flexible) which will also let you save time of your staff. If you are an industrial waste collector, we will equip your containers with train system (possibility of transporting more than one at the same time), fork-lift sockets or we will sell it to you without lid (if you don’t need it) to reduce the price.

– Who are CONTENUR’s customers in Poland? What perspectives do you see in themarket?

G: Our customers are companies collecting wastes, both private (local ones and international groups) as well as those in public sector. We also deliver our products to municipalities and we give end users possibility of buying our products from our distributors. We have solutions for industrial sector as well. I believe that there will be demand for remarkable number of containers for selective waste collection in Poland. Although the level of “containerisation” in most of the biggest cities is already high, there are a lot of small municipalities that still need to equip their citizens with “tools” to segregate wastes. In addition there are many old containers in the market that will need to be replaced. I believe that consumers’ expectations will keep on increasing which will result in higher demand for more sophisticated solutions (customized products, underground waste containers) and high quality services (maintenance of waste containers).

– What are the biggest projects that CONTENUR Poland has participated recently in?

G: CONTENUR products are used by people in many Polish cities, towns and villages. In 2018 the biggest projects that we participated in (with our business partners) were deliveries of selective waste collection containers to Białystok, Lublin, Poznań and Sosnowiec. This year we have already delivered thousands of segregation containers to our capital city, Warsaw. This is a very challenging project as the demand of the biggest Polish municipality is enormous. Nevertheless our Team are doing their best to respond to the needs promptly.