Voith is accelerating its digital transformation, taking yet another step in its digital agenda. The technology group has joined forces with the Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures – a subsidiary of the Boston Consulting Group – to establish a digital marketplace for paper industry. The joint venture has been named merQbiz after Mercury, the Roman god of trade.
The merQbiz company has its headquarters in Manhattan Beach, California. John Fox, previous President of Voith Paper in North America, has been named merQbiz CEO. The first product solution from merQbiz is the first digital trading platform for recovered paper in the US, initially aimed at market participants of the North American paper industry.
The North American recovered paper market has so far been characterized by strong fragmentation, with many different market participants, inconsistent supply and logistics chains, low levels of price transparency and fluctuating product qualities.
This is where the merQbiz trading platform steps in: traders and buyers from pulp and paper mills, paper brokers and recycling companies can directly network with one another in the future and receive all the relevant information on supply and demand.
The trading platform for recovered paper has now been online for around two weeks and has already traded more than 100 tons of recovered paper. The platform is not only for trading recovered paper. It also networks logistics services companies that transport the goods from point A to point B.
For Voith, merQbiz is another major step in becoming one of the significant players of the digital industry. Voith plans to invest about Euro 50 million in the setup of the venture by the end of fiscal 2020.
