The origins of Meco go back to a previous company in which the first generation Peirón worked. “That company – remembers Juan José Peirón, second generation and current manager of the firm – closed in 1982 and, a year later, in 1983 my father founded Meco with two other partners. The objective of the company at that time was focused on manufacturing machines for the vegetable oil sector: grinding presses, sedimentation tanks, rolling mills … This sector initially experienced an upward period in Meco because when the other company closed, residual customers remained. Then the sector stabilized “. In 1996, when his father was already the sole partner of the company, Juan José joined the family project after working for nine years in an external company. His intention was to give more dynamism to the company.
“The first thing I noticed was that the vegetable oils sector was clearly going down in Spain due to the fact that there are three large multinationals that supply replacement materials«) and machines to this sector, and companies prefer to go to them for prices and due to other factors that are totally out of our control. It was initially presented as a situation with no point of return. We do, however, keep some teeth in this sector because we are not going to stop serving them, and they are also important clients that give us prestige and references. They are companies such as Aceites Borges, Grupo Bunge, Cargill, etc … “.

First step of diversification: Meco Services

Against this background, Meco needed to find new activity and new markets. “For this we take advantage of our mechanical knowledge, which was very extensive because the machines for oils are large and complex machines. The first step in this diversification process was to start working in the industrial maintenance sector, providing high added value. Something was already being carried out. I have worked in this line before, but from 1996 we gave it greater relevance: A Meco Services Division was created and we expanded our services including production improvements, mechanical updating of machines … We began to strengthen this Division and we achieved the trust of really interesting teeth like Kellogges, Repsol, Saint Gobain, Afinity, Rexam, a company that manufactures millions of cans for the soft drink sector.

Second stage of the expansion process: Meco Machines

Soon the maintenance division began to give interesting results, but Juan José considered that taking advantage of the mechanical capacity of his father – to whom he jokingly says that “just as Carl Lewis was born to race, he did it to design and manufacture mechanical gadgets’- and by adding it to their own, and improving the organization and internal management of the company, they could offer the market more proposals. ‘It was then that we came up with, initially due to internal needs, to manufacture a machine to make keyways. We built a prototype that we finished, between orders one day at dawn, and when we tested it, we were amazed at how well it worked: it made huge keyways with great ease. And there it was, until one day a commercial from one of our suppliers, with the We also maintain a friendly relationship, he saw the machine working and told us that there were many companies that needed something like this. This encouraged us and we built a couple of m machines to present at a fair in Barcelona in 2000. We exhibited one of them and although it convinced us, aesthetically it was totally out of the market, from what other companies presented, and we did not sell a single machine “. After this experience, they began to work on the design and in 2000, Meco put on the market an innovative mortising machine, with high precision, speed and ease of use. It is a patented system developed entirely by the Meco team that has already been successfully introduced in more than 20 countries around the world.

For the immediate future: Meco Domestic A third division will appear that we are about to start, which will be called Meco Domestic because we have a number of projects in the drawer that are aimed at direct people, the general public. We have a series of products and if all goes well in January we will release the first of them, which is a line of a product that cannot be said. It is a line with a great future because we have very interesting projects. These products will be marketed in the United States directly. After this product in parallel we are already working on others and if they come out they can be quite impressive at a general level.

A qualitative leap in the workshop with Mazak

Undoubtedly, an important milestone in this revolution lived by Meco was the purchase in 2007 of its first Mazak machine, an 800 horizontal pallet machining center. “At that time, Juan José explains, the purchase was marked by geometries from our machine catalog. We did an in-depth study on how to machine the bodies of the machines and came to the conclusion that the Mazak was the machine that best suited the job we had to do and we were very satisfied with the machine in question. Furthermore, Intermaher has a very good technical and commercial network. With this history, at the end of 2009 we bought a Mazak Nexus QTN400M volume with a swing of 854 and 2 meters between points. We already had the experience of the first machine, we controlled the system and the decision was much easier because it was starting to stop making sense to buy another brand. In addition, at Intermaher they have impeccable service and they have given us a fantastic treatment, we have never stopped because of the machines “.

After these years, and to prepare for a near future of changes at the organizational level in Meco they had to rethink another investment to expand their machinery park. “Now two important machines are entering, another volume for the end of the year and in March of next year another large center enters. As there were two machines, we once again considered the possibility of considering other brands. We began to evaluate different options and in the end we returned to Mazak for the history of service and quality of the machines. In addition, the Mazatrol control is already known to the personnel who operate the machines, and even if new personnel must be recruited, the former can teach them more easily. “

15/12/2014