NEWS FROM HARRO HÖFLIGER  

Giving up was never an option

40 years ago, Wolf­gang M. Rauch, Man­aging Director of Harro Höfliger Pack­aging Sys­tems Ltd., met Harro Höfliger for the first time. Mutu­ally sim­patico from the begin­ning, a friend­ship devel­oped, and a last-minute action turned into a suc­cessful busi­ness rela­tion­ship. Wolf­gang Rauch does not make any promises he cannot keep. When the whisky dis­tillery Dram­buie wanted […]

40 years ago, Wolf­gang M. Rauch, Man­aging Director of Harro Höfliger Pack­aging Sys­tems Ltd., met Harro Höfliger for the first time. Mutu­ally sim­patico from the begin­ning, a friend­ship devel­oped, and a last-minute action turned into a suc­cessful busi­ness relationship.

Wolf­gang Rauch does not make any promises he cannot keep. When the whisky dis­tillery Dram­buie wanted to com­mis­sion a pack­aging machine in 1976, he declined, because he could not promise the desired delivery date. His frank­ness paid off: The cus­tomer decided, after a quick side-trip to the com­pe­ti­tion, to order the machine from Rauch’s former employer anyway. A col­league in Ger­many advised to get in touch with Harro Höfliger, who might be able to help with this short-term order.

“I called and vis­ited him together with my cus­tomer shortly there­after,” says Wolf­gang Rauch. “At that time, Harro did not have an office yet. We dis­cussed all the impor­tant points in a restau­rant, and then he showed us the area in his car until it was time for the return flight.” arro Höfliger had eight weeks to build the machine. If he suc­ceeded, he would receive a bonus of 15 per­cent of the pur­chase price. Of course, he suc­ceeded. “Even if the last assembly work took place on the truck that the cus­tomer had sent to pick up the machine,” Rauch says, laughing. “I really appre­ciate this in Harro – and it is some­thing we have in common: We never give up.”

This anec­dote is a pre­lude to a part­ner­ship that has proved highly suc­cessful over the years, both on a pri­vate level and in busi­ness. On the advice of Harro Höfliger, Wolf­gang Rauch founded his own com­pany in 1981. Rau­pack Ltd., head­quar­tered in Old Woking near London, ini­tially oper­ating as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for sev­eral man­u­fac­turers, and the very first order com­pleted together with Harro Höfliger was a resounding suc­cess. Chivas Regal ordered a labeling machine with an erector fea­ture as well as the con­ver­sion of a car­toning machine, and ulti­mately bought a spe­cial system without having seen a ref­er­ence or demon­stra­tion machine.

The suc­cess­fully com­pleted projects of Wolf­gang Rauch and Harro Höfliger include the assembly of syringes. This led to the team’s estab­lish­ment in the British phar­ma­ceu­tical market.

The tandem team Rau­pack Ltd. and Harro Höfliger GmbH made a name for them­selves in the United Kingdom and Ire­land, as problem solvers for com­plex projects and devel­op­ment projects in the food sector, in the phar­ma­ceu­tical industry and in med­ical technology.Wolfgang Rauch is con­tin­u­ously expanding his sales team. Since November 2012, Rau­pack Ltd. has been a 100 per­cent sub­sidiary of Harro Höfliger Ver­pack­ungs­maschinen GmbH. The sales and ser­vice branch with 14 mostly long-term employees under the lead­er­ship of Wolf­gang Rauch, is respon­sible for sev­eral busi­ness sec­tors in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Rauch is sat­is­fied with his career: “For me, the pur­pose of work is to make a living, but also to find ful­fill­ment – and I always did and still do.” He is also very proud of his employees: “Usu­ally I only act as a kind of flipper. I start the ball rolling and give it direc­tion. I do not believe in exces­sive con­trol. Anyone who wants to work inde­pen­dently, should be left to do so.” Asked about the joint recipe for suc­cess, Wolf­gang Rauch says: “Harro and I have never suc­cumbed to resis­tance. Our cus­tomers feel that they have part­ners who are trying hard, who can admit when some­thing is not working as orig­i­nally thought, but always find ways to com­plete an order.”

Although his centre of life is in the UK, Wolf­gang Rauch reg­u­larly travels to the Harro Höfliger head­quar­ters in Allmers­bach im Tal. Every now and then there is still time left after work to indulge in a common pas­sion with Harro Höfliger: Vin­tage cars. They started the col­lec­tion together and to this day, the entire respectable fleet of his­toric trea­sures from Ger­many and the UK is parked in one garage. “We com­ple­ment each other in many ways,” says Rauch, laughing.

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Photos: Janine Kyofsky, Harro Höfliger, dies-irae/iStockphoto.com