Page Text: The “MONGOL” lettering looks interesting – the characters seem to hover.
Frank says:
Happy New Year you too!
I like the nice 70ties retro look packaging.
January 5, 2011 at 1:45 pm
The Eberhard Faber Mongol trademark in Columbia is now owned by the Peruvian company Lapices y Conexos S.A. (LayConsa) which has controlled the rights to the Mongol brand in Peru for many years. LayConsa acquired these rights a few years ago when they purchased the remaining assets of Industria Columbiana de Lapices S.A. which was located in Cali. The Cali location had been shut down for some years. These pencils are being produced in LayConsa’s factory in Arequipa, Peru. Thus the Eberhard Faber de Columbia simply represents the marketing entity LayConsa has established in that market.
The Newell Sanford operation in Bogota, Columbia was originally established by Berol and as such never had the rights to Mongol as Berol produced the Mirado. This Bogota facility has produced primarily color pencils, most notably the Prismacolor brand. Unfortunately, in November Newell announced the closure of their Columbia production operations by year end 2010 and are in fact in wind down operations there now and will only have sales and distribution facilities in Columbia going forward. Newell’s supply for the Columbia market will now be taken up by their Mexicali, Mexico facility and Asian based purchases from OEM suppliers. Unfortunately, this means Columbia is now the next Latin American country to cease having a domestic base of pencil manufacturing. I had planned to post about this development on Timberlines, but prefer not to do such posts too promptly following the news given our company’s status as a supplier.