Johan Jonkman, Sales Manager at VMI CAN was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. A linguist by trade and an engineer by hobby, he’s been in technical sales roles all his working life.
Since early 2007 Johan has been active worldwide as Sales Manager for VMI’s can division, one of the main suppliers and trusted partner for state-of-the-art washers, dryers, wash-coaters, aluminum bottle rinsers and boilers to the two-piece canmaking industry.Relentlessly travelling the world and being present at all can shows and conferences around the world, he’s been a familiar face ever since.
He made a substantial contribution to VMI’s position in the market, with over 250 installations all over the world with all major canmakers as well as local manufacturers. After almost 20 years of living the dream in this great industry he has now retired and has found time for family, friends and hobbies.
Octavio Lacueva was born in Calanda, a small town in Aragon, Spain, in 1937. During the post-war era, at the age of 16, he emigrated to Barcelona, where he began working at the Blanch workshops, building machinery for the manufacture of metal packaging.
He spent several years there as an apprentice and quickly rose to the position of foreman thanks to his exceptional mechanical aptitude. In Barcelona, he met the love of his life, María; they married there and started their family, welcoming two of their five children. In 1967, at the age of 30, Blanch sent him to Calahorra, La Rioja, where he installed the region's first production line for three-piece cans, utilizing tin-lead alloy soldering. For one year, he provided technical assistance to various local can manufacturing plants, such as Metalcolor, Comercial de Envases, Envases Ballujera, and others. During that year, he realized that there were no specialized workshops in the area to support packaging manufacturers and food canners.
Consequently, in 1968, he decided to open his own workshop in Calahorra and relocated his entire family there. He started with a small, 100-square-meter workshop and hired his first employee. During the initial years, his primary activity was providing technical services to can factories; after a few years, he began manufacturing tooling—such as body maker components, seaming heads, and press dies—for the industry.
A few years later, he purchased his first can seamer in Germany, which he refurbished and subsequently sold to a local food canner. Sometime later, he acquired another workshop spanning 500 square meters, where he gradually hired additional staff. In 1985, he purchased a warehouse complex covering 5,000 square meters, which he filled with machinery over the course of a few years. He subsequently expanded his facility to reach 12,000 square meters, housing a stock of over 2,000 machines.
He retired at the age of 65, but in reality, he never retired. He continued visiting his warehouse and checking on his machines until he was 87. He passed away in December 2024.