Mexico City — A major Latin American supplier of containers for the international cosmetics industry has seen its business shrink by up to 30 percent in the past few years.
"There's a lot of informal cosmetics business around," said José Federico Vera Palafox, founder and CEO of injection molder Grupo Industrial Vera SA de CV.
He blamed, among others, fly-by-night operations that pay little or no tax.
"Our sales have gone down 25-30 percent in the past two or three years. We are now looking [at ways] to lower prices but it's very difficult," Vera told Plastics News.
He founded the company, commonly known as Givsa, in Naucalpan, an industrial district within the Mexico City metropolitan area, in 1979. It had 720 employees in late 2012 and has 550 today. Vera said 80-100 workers had been laid off in the past two years.
"We are still the biggest supplier of containers for the cosmetics and perfumery industry in Mexico," Vera said. Givsa makes products ranging from jars to lipstick tubes and cases and it has 25 clients currently, Vera added.
Givsa was founded in 1979. Today it comprises three companies with 38 injection presses and annual resin throughput of more than 4.4 million pounds.
The group's three companies are injection molders Precisión en Plásticos y Moldes SA de CV (PPM), established in 1979, and Moldeo de Plásticos Far SA de CV (FAR), started in 1984, plus mold maker Fabricación de Moldes y Plásticos SA de CV (FMP), launched in 1985.