apply the same strict criteria to their suppliers as automotive
companies do."
World class
Part of that advantage goes back to the days when ALT was part
of Avery Dennison and Verstraeten was at the start of his career.
His first assignment was to develop a new strategy for Avery
Dennison's label manufacturing activities in the Netherlands.
"We quickly realized that the competitive edge we had over
most of our many competitors lay in our superior technological
know-how. That enabled us to target new markets, specifically
the automotive industry, that applies such high standards to it
suppliers that most competitors don't dare to approach it."
After Avery Dennison had decided to divest these activities, Ver-
straeten and his fellow managers seized the opportunity for a
management buy-out. In 2002, they partnered to form Sentega
and ALT was established as a Sentega subsidiary in which Ver-
straeten obtained a 30% ownership share. What followed were
years of product innovations, commercial growth and strong
operational improvements. Production facilities were opened in
Romania, and quality management and logistics were continu-
ously improved to meet the world class levels required by ALT's
automotive customers.
That single critical moment
The outside of ALT's Utrecht headquarters does not give you any
clue of all the sophisticated, high-tech activities that take place
inside. And frankly, even if you are allowed inside to have a look
at the manufacturing of ALT's airbag components, you will prob-
ably still not be very impressed. That changes when Verstraeten
pulls one such item off the production line and tells you about its
properties and all the requirements it must fulfill. Only then do
you start to appreciate the astounding amount of technological
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know-how that goes into the perforated, heavily labeled sheet
of plastic he holds in his hands. It must be inflammable and
odourless, can not contain any of an endless list of chemicals,
must be equally strong and elastic in any direction you pull it
and must tear at the exact amount of strength applied. Most
importantly, it must, under all possible circumstances, keep the
airbag it covers in place for the duration of a car's life, except
for that single critical moment when the bag must inflate during
an accident. A little later in his factory tour, Verstraeten proudly
shows the new machine that prints apparently simple labels for
the control panel of a washing machine. When he mentions that
this printing behemoth required an investment of well over 1 mil-
lion euro's, you know for sure that ALT is indeed in the business
of Advanced Label Technologies.
Mickey Mouse multinational
After an entire career at ALT and its predecesoors, Verstraeten
is a veteran of such technologies. At age 53, does he still have
the drive and energy to realize ALT's ambitious growth plans?
Is he himself still sufficiently dynamic and daring? Verstraeten
initially just laughs, as if that were not abundantly clear. "It's still
there," he says reassuringly. "After all, I could have just sold
my stake in ALT and leave, but instead I reinvested my money.
I truly believe in this company. I built it up and want to continue
to develop it into the best company it can be. I want to leave
something that the generation that comes after us can use as
a healthy basis from which to take it even further. To me, in the
end, that is what being an entrepreneur is all about."
As he talks about this in early 2012, ALT's new production facil-
ity is being opened in China, and within three years he wants to
open another one in Brazil. "It is only because of our new own-
ers that we are now actually able to do that. And we simply have
to," explains Verstraeten. "Our end-customers like Volkswagen,
General Motors and Toyota demand that their suppliers have
a local presence near their major production sites. We may be
tiny compared to our customers, but we are critically important
to them as well. If we mess up, they need to halt their factory
lines. So in a few years from now, we will have turned ALT into
a Mickey Mouse multinational."
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