M. Holland Latinoamérica is open for business.
The new firm is a partnership between resin distributor M. Holland Co. of North Brook, Ill., and resin and chemical supplier Grupo Solquim of Mexico City. Holland officials on July 31 confirmed the completion of the deal.
M. Holland Latinoamérica “will be the platform for our aggressive growth plans in Mexico and Latin America,” president and CEO Ed Holland said in a news release. “This expansion is in strategic alignment with the needs of our suppliers and gives us more solutions to bring to existing and new customers.”
The new company has almost 500 customers and an infrastructure that includes commercial reach throughout Mexico. It's supported by warehousing, bagging lines, rail terminals, pulverizing equipment and a fleet of bulk and packaged delivery trucks.
M. Holland Latinoamérica is led by director general Patricio Lebrija and operations director Francisco Xavier Lebrija. Both are long-time executives of Grupo Solquim. When the partnership was announced in May, Ed Holland said that his firm chose to expand beyond the U.S. and Canada because of the North American shale gas and shale oil boom, along with changes occurring in the global petrochemicals industry.
M. Holland ranks as one of North America's four largest resin distributors, handling resins and compounds from more than 20 suppliers. The firm — founded in 1950 by Ed's father, Marvin Holland — has around 3,000 customers and supplies more than 1 billion pounds of resin annually.
Mexico City-based Grupo Solquim was founded in 1970. The firm's primary supplier is state-owned Pemex Petroquímica SA de CV. Pemex resins now may be available to Holland customers in the United States as well.
M. Holland Latinoamerica now will allow a good portion of M. Holland's portfolio of materials from more than 20 materials firms to be sold throughout Latin America. Previously, the firm's Latin American sales accounted for less than 10 percent of its total.
The Mexican market's attraction to U.S. resin distributors was reinforced last month when resin distributor Osterman & Co. Inc. of Cheshire, Conn., formed a joint venture company with Industrial Mafra SA de CV, a distributor of polyethylene resin based in Morelos, Mexico.