Journey through time

Start of a success story: Jürgen Heindl founded Prowell and set himself no less a goal than revolutionising the corrugated board market. His strategy was based on two pillars: Firstly, consistently implementing his greenfield strategy, so ensuring that all production facilities and machines were state-of-the-art and built on greenfield sites. And secondly, having consistent links with customers and suppliers.

Impressive experiences were a feature of the incentive trips that Jürgen Heindl organised for his employees in order to reward them for the tremendous effort they had put in and motivate them to continue to perform in the future.

The first trip in 1994 took the team to Prague.

Lots more trips would follow, including visits to Norway, Malta and Lake Starnberg.

Partnership rather than competition: Once Jürgen Heindl had successfully started his company, he was looking for new approaches to make customers more competitive, avoid transport costs and enable deliveries to be made even more reliably, flexibly and faster.

Heindl’s forward-looking idea led to the development of the innovative packaging park concept. He offered his customers the opportunity to construct their plant right next to a corrugated board plant. The aim was to automate deliveries to the customer as much as possible. This would save time and deliver cost benefits to give the customer greater flexibility and therefore a clear competitive advantage. Jürgen Heindl was convinced that this in turn would also accelerate Progroup's growth. And this innovative concept succeeded too. The model was implemented for the first time in 1998 with the construction of the third corrugated sheetfeeder plant PW03 in Burg near Magdeburg ...

... and optimised eight years later (in 2006) at Schüttorf, Lower Saxony.

Another packaging park was also constructed a year later (in 2007) in Offenbach an der Queich.

A next development step was the packaging park II model in which Progroup constructs a corrugated sheetboard plant at its customer’s site. This combined model is created through integration with an existing site. It is noted for having a state-of-the-art intralogistics system and was first implemented in 2015 in Plößberg in Germany's Upper Palatinate region.

Jürgen Heindl achieved another technical breakthrough with the construction of the fourth corrugated sheetfeeder plant in Rokycany, Czech Republic:

It was the first time that a corrugator machine had manufactured products with a machine width of 3.35 metres rather than the industry-standard width of 2.50 or 2.80 metres. Heindl unveiled this world first by video link to an astonished industry at the world's most important “Corrugated” trade fair in Paris.

It was the first time that a corrugator machine had manufactured products with a machine width of 3.35 metres rather than the industry-standard width of 2.50 or 2.80 metres. Heindl unveiled this world first by video link to an astonished industry at the world's most important “Corrugated” trade fair in Paris.

Progroup Logistics uses optimised semi-trailers to make efficient use of the cargo space that exists in the trucks. They have an internal height of three metres and a lifting roof as well as a loading length of up to 15 metres. This means they can transport up to six paper reels, with a width of 3.35 metres and a weight of about four tonnes each. This is equivalent to a total payload of up to 25 tonnes.

Another key milestone in Progroup’s growth story: Although Poland was not the first country in Eastern Europe that Progroup invested in, it has now developed to become one of Progroup’s most important sites outside of Germany. The PW07 corrugated sheetfeeder plant in Stryków, which started operating in 2009, was at the time the biggest in Poland and one of the most productive in Europe.

In the same year, in order to strengthen and complement Progroup's activities in the heart of Europe, the company expanded over the English Channel to Great Britain to cater for the British and Irish market.

Just in time to mark Progroup's 25th anniversary year (2017), Jürgen Heindl established the second production site in south-west Poland: Trzcinica. The emphasis here was on quickly establishing a packaging park II model. This site saw ambitious championing of digitisation and networking with the partner company.

Production at the PW14 corrugated sheetfeeder plant began in the first quarter of 2023. It is adjacent to the existing plant PW07 and produces up to 200,000 tonnes of corrugated sheetboard each year. This means that Stryków is now one of the world's biggest sites for corrugated board production.

A new era of travel for Jürgen Heindl began in 2014 with the Next Story Tour. Jürgen Heindl and his team planned this tour based on the model of the “Expédition Citroën Centre-Asie”, which from 1931 to 1932 saw the first crossing of Asia in vehicles along the Silk Road and is still regarded today as one of the greatest expeditions of the 20th century.

The journey on motorbikes and in all-terrain vehicles together with customers, partners and long-standing employees crossed two continents to the place where paper was first made.

The idea behind this was that Progroup is well-known among its customers and employees for being a leading innovator in the paper and corrugated board industry. All along the legendary Silk Road route, the tradition of papermaking right through to state-of-the-art paper factories can be experienced up close.

After Jürgen Heindl and his fellow travellers “experienced” the “journey of paper” in the truest sense of the word in the opposite direction on the “Next Story” tour in nine individual stages along the Silk Road over a period of three years (from 2014 to 2016), in 2018 the expedition on the Spice Road went back in the reverse direction from east to west. This completed the circle.

Setting the right course at an early stage: Progroup's aim is to use its unique business model to have a lasting impact on the market over the long term. This close link across the generations guarantees that customers, employees and partners can carry on benefiting from Progroup’s continuity and reliability. At the turn of 2022/2023, Jürgen Heindl handed over the role of CEO to his son Maximilian. The success story continues.

Jürgen Heindl celebrated his 70th birthday on 29 January 2025. His life’s work demonstrates in impressive style how courage, vision and entrepreneurial responsibility can generate long-term success.