The family business Meco, from Valls (Alt Camp), has managed to rub shoulders with companies – most of them German, leading the machine tool sector – high-precision notching machines that are essential for joining all types of parts. The company has 20 employees and two industrial engineers, father and son, in the department of innovation and development (R&D), and its machines are used in multiple industrial sectors: agri-food, aviation, automotive, large oil companies or maritime navigation . “We are in everything that moves,” sums up Juanjo Peirón, manager of Meco.

The ability to innovate and provide tailor-made solutions to large industry has placed this small brand among the world elite of keyways: the keys are the grooves that must be made in the female parts so that a multitude of gears fit and function in this way , be it a cereal production chain, packaging or in the workshop of a manufacturer of wind turbines or trains. Meco has managed to gain a foothold in this sector with enormous competition, since, along with German manufacturers, there are many Chinese and Indians who play cheaply.

The founder of Meco, Juan A. Peirón, of Aragonese origin, continues to come to the company every morning at 72, where he does research. Only the tenacity and an enormous capacity for work help to understand how Meco has managed to sell all over the world from Valls. Not all Meco machines are the same, although its international success is based on its latest great invention, a machine with the ability to make grooves on the inside and outside of the pieces, at greater speed and precision: “It is a total innovation to world level ”, highlights the manager.

Meco was created in the early eighties, but in 2006 the founder predicted that his new machine would allow them to double their turnover if they were able to succeed in exporting. Six years later, reality has proved him right. Meco will close 2012 with a business of 2.4 million euros despite the current blockage of the Spanish market, where they have managed to sell 250 machines. Part of its turnover comes from the industrial maintenance business, with clients such as Repsol, Dow Chemical or Kellogg’s.

In Europe, Meco has 18 of its machines running, tailor-made suits from a standard model ranging from 10,000 to 300,000 euros; they have also penetrated South America, the US and Canada. “We still have a way and work to make ourselves more known,” says Peirón.

28/09/2012