Voith Launches merQbiz Digital Trading Platform for Paper Industry
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Voith, Germany, is accelerating its digital transformation, taking yet another step in its digital agenda. The technology group has joined forces with the Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures, Boston, Mass., USA, a subsidiary of the Boston Consulting Group, to establish a digital marketplace for the paper industry. The joint venture has been named merQbiz after Mercury, the Roman god of trade, and is headquartered in Manhattan Beach, Calif., USA.
"As an established technology leader with a profound expertise knowledge, we want to make a significant contribution to the digital transformation of the industry – and with the foundation of merQbiz, we at Voith have taken yet another step forward in our digital agenda," explained Dr. Hubert Lienhard, president and CEO of Voith.
John Fox, previous president of Voith Paper in North America, has been named merQbiz CEO. The first product solution from merQbiz is the first digital trading platform for recovered paper in the U.S., initially aimed at market participants of the North American paper industry. The North American recovered paper market has so far been characterized by strong fragmentation, with many different market participants, inconsistent supply and logistics chains, low levels of price transparency, and fluctuating product qualities. This is where the merQbiz trading platform steps in: traders and buyers from pulp and paper mills, paper brokers, and recycling companies can directly network with one another in the future and receive all of the relevant information on supply and demand. They can also conduct their buying and selling transactions securely on the trading platform. Like many well-known online marketplaces, merQbiz can take over the evaluation of the sellers and buyers and the quality of the merchandise. This ensures enhanced transactional transparency, professional processing, and a high level of security for all goods, logistics, and payment flows.
Recovered paper is a critical commodity for paper manufacturing. An example would be a containerboard mill, which requires around 350,000 metric tons of recovered paper per year. This is equivalent to roughly 100 truckloads per day and costs of around $40 million every year.
"Digital marketplaces and e-commerce platforms have long been established in the world of consumer goods, but a digital trading platform for the recovered paper market is the first of its kind in the U.S., where sellers and buyers can come together on one single platform. Thanks to merQbiz, the buying and selling of recovered paper can be processed securely and quickly, and the paper industry is provided with a predictable and scalable inflow of recovered paper – a resource that’s essential for the operation of paper mills," explained Fox.
The trading platform for recovered paper has now been online for around two weeks and has already traded more than 100 meric tons of recovered paper. The platform is not only for trading recovered paper. It also networks logistics services companies that transport the goods from point A to point B. "We are convinced that merQbiz will make the paper industry more efficient and successful," Fox summarized..
For Voith, merQbiz is another major step in becoming one of the significant players of the digital industry. Voith plans to invest about EUR 50 million in the setup of the venture by the end of fiscal 2020. The course for the group’s digital agenda has been already set in April 2016, when Voith founded its new Group Division Voith Digital Solutions. With this, Voith takes three strategic directions: first, supplementing its existing product portfolio with additional, digital capabilities that offer customers extended functions and added value; second, developing new digital solutions in the traditional core markets; and third, developing new products and business models for markets to date not covered by Voith.
