Nefab is an industrial packaging provider for businesses around the world, with 2024 marking their 75th year of operations. The firm has offered engineered packaging, logistics, and digital solutions that save financial and environmental resources for customers in 35 countries from its global network of 103 facilities, with 57 in Europe alone.
The company began as a transport packaging firm in Sweden but quickly expanded to become a logistics services company with a worldwide reach, employing 4,300 people, including an elite global team of +220 engineers collaborating to create environmentally friendly packaging and logistics solutions. These solutions are then tested through Nefab’s certified in-house laboratories in a process that involves working with its clients, side-by-side.
Among those worldwide markets, Nefab’s Polish branch is a crucial part of the company. Nefab entered the Polish market in 2001.
Artur Karnecki joined the company two years later, and 20 years later he is the Managing Director of Nefab Poland.
“We started as a trading office with three people and from there we have grown to the point where we employ approximately 130 people over four locations,” Karnecki tells us. “We have gone down a long road from product to service, finding cost reductions, offering cleaning services as well as digital services, and adapting as the market changes to meet our clients’ needs.”
That ability to adapt is what has made Nefab Poland stand out in the market. But it has also been able to trade on its reach – not just as part of a global company, but as a business that is near its customers wherever they are in Poland itself.
“Poland is not a small country, and to cover it geographically we need to be close to our customers,” Karnecki tells us. “That is the only way we can give them the service they need. We started with one hub in the north of Poland at Kowale. Now we have one in Sosnowiec the south and one in Wrocław with a sales office in Poznań. When customers want us to be close to them, that’s where we move to.”
Following Partnerships
You can see a perfect example of this approach in the new facility Nefab Poland has leased under a five-year contract at CTPark Gdańsk Port. The space will be used to manufacture and store a range of packaging as well as finished and semi-finished goods. The facility is perfectly positioned to serve Nefab’s Polish clients, such as energy storage systems and battery module manufacturer Northvolt.
The new lease will give Nefab Poland access to 10,300 square metres of industrial and warehouse space as well as 600 square metres of offices, with the site’s development facilitated by Querco Property.
Northvolt’s products are designed to replace internal combustion engines in industrial machinery, making sustainability a key priority for Northvolt as a client.
“The site will open next year. The facility will cover 11,000 square metres and we are going install tools to aid its part in the circular economy, including a cleaning machine for recycled packaging,” Karnecki says. “We will still be doing what we do now, but we will be taking on extra work that will let us develop our cleaning and logistics and digital services.”
This is not work for just one client, however. It is part of a broader move towards sustainability that is taking place across the entire Nefab Group.
“We just finished our summit in Sweden. About 140 executives met for a three-day session focusing on the year 2027, where we were given the goals, we will be focusing on,” Karnecki says. “We are focusing on sustainability and reducing CO2 emissions. With Northvolt we are using a lot of returnable packaging, which will create a loop as we clean and reuse it to drive the circular economy.”
When it opens during 2024’s first quarter, this new facility will be Nefab’s largest centre in Poland. The site for the facility was chosen only after Nefab had analysed various options, before concluding that this location was strategically the best one for the firm’s development, particularly with Northvolt and other potential new customers in the area.
But while location is a key part of Nefab’s strategy, the company’s selling point, besides products and services, has always been its 3 C’s Customer First, Co-operation and Communication
“We focus on on customer needs. We are open to ideas, listening to our customers and what they need from us, whether it is cleaning, packaging, live tracking with our digital platform or warehousing,” Karnecki tells us. “We offer different solutions to track customers’ packaging at any time of day or night to check where they are, their temperature, and if there is any damage.”
Delivering Talent
Nefab cannot deliver any products or services if it does not have the people on hand to deliver them. This, Karnecki says, is perhaps Nefab’s biggest challenge, particularly in Poland.
“We face the same challenges around competitiveness as anywhere, but we have also faced a shortage of labour,” Karnecki admits. “Poland has seen a lot of people moving towards the west. While it is not a high-cost labour market by any means, costs have increased within the country to the point where we may not be perceived as a low-cost country for much longer. So, finding the right talent is the main challenge that we face here.”
To acquire the necessary people, Nefab Poland has sourced talent through a number of avenues, depending on the skills it is looking to recruit.
“We use a lot of headhunters. As we expand our services, we need more professionals. We use a local Polish jobs portal and have hired a new HR manager to work with our employees and create incentives to retain them in the country in line with our Global Peoples plan” Karnecki says.
Retention is essential, given the amount of energy the company expends on recruitment, but also how much the company invests in making those, firms a part of the business’s culture.
“Once we find the right recruits, we take them through a learning process. It is an investment to make sure a person is on-boarded properly and knows what is expected of them,” Karnecki says.
With that talent on board, Nefab Poland is going to continue to pursue both its own long-term strategy and that of the Group as a whole.
“We will focus on services including cleaning, digitalization and logistics. That is where we will be going forward,” Karnecki tells us. “Our goal is that by 2030, 75% of packaging will be sustainable packaging.”
