Romaco’s New CSO: What It Means for Packaging Buyers

Last Tuesday, I was running through our quarterly supplier review when a press release from Romaco crossed my desk. New Chief Sales Officer. Nicola Magriotis. First person to hold that role at group level. My first thought wasn’t about the name – it was about what this signals for someone like me, managing packaging equipment procurement for a mid-size pharma contract packer.

I’ve been in procurement for about seven years, overseeing roughly $2.5M in annual capital equipment spend. Romaco has been on my radar – Macofar and Promatic lines show up in a lot of our competitors’ floors. So when I saw they’d created a Group CSO position and filled it with someone who’s spent nearly two decades inside the company, I paid attention.

Here’s my take: this move is less about sales strategy and more about relationship continuity – which, for buyers like me, is actually good news.

Magriotis started at Romaco’s Bologna site back in 2007. Since then he’s run product management, sales direction, even the Italian subsidiary as managing director. That kind of tenure means he knows the machinery inside out – and more importantly, he’s seen how support breakdowns happen when sales and service don’t talk to each other. The fact that his new role explicitly covers both sales and service tells me Romaco wants to close that loop.

I once had a supplier whose sales team promised delivery timelines the service engineers couldn’t meet. It cost us a three-week line shutdown and a $40K expedite fee. Having one person accountable for both sides doesn’t guarantee perfection, but it sure improves the odds.

Magriotis also holds a mechanical engineering degree plus an MBA from Bologna Business School. That combination – technical depth plus business context – is exactly what you want in a sales chief when you’re buying complex machinery. He’s not just a closer; he’s someone who can explain why a changeover takes 45 minutes, not 30.

And then there’s the Truking connection. Romaco’s parent company, Truking Technology, is doubling down on collaboration. Magriotis said they’ll work “even more closely together” to expand markets. From a procurement perspective, that could mean tighter integration – shared service networks, faster spare parts logistics, maybe even combined system offerings. If it’s done right, it reduces the number of vendors we have to manage. If it’s done wrong, it could create single‑source dependence. I’ll be watching how the first 12 months play out.

The CEO, Jens Torkel, described Magriotis as someone who “builds bridges.” In an international group with a fragmented sales network and a global customer base, that’s not just flattery – it’s a job description. For buyers, bridge‑building means fewer mixed messages and more consistent support across regions.

Honestly, I’ve seen too many supplier reorganizations that look good on paper but deliver nothing on the plant floor. This one feels different – because it’s an internal promotion of someone who’s already demonstrated he can run a business unit profitably. He’s not learning the industry; he’s scaling what he already knows.

Will it make my next Romaco inquiry smoother? Too early to tell. But I’d rather negotiate with someone who understands both the sales cycle and the service lifecycle – and that’s exactly what Magriotis brings to the table.

– A procurement manager who’s been burned by good press releases before.