Industry Europe – Issue 24.1 by IndustryEurope

VOLUME 24/1 – 2014 • €6

The world of European manufacturing

GOLAR MOVES UPSTREAM LUCITE LEADS IN ACRYLICS TECHNOLOGY PERFECTION IN LEATHER FROM WOLLSDORF

PHARMA INDUSTRY LOOKS FOR A BETTER YEAR IN 2014

OPINION

PETERMERCER

Room at the top The Mayor of London has upset everyone by pointing out that we’re all in a global race and we need to be better at winning.

ondon’s Mayor Boris Johnson seems to be able to get away with saying almost anything. Even his perhaps over-appreciative comments on the ’seminaked’ women beach volleyball players at the 2012 Olympics, ‘glistening like wet otters on Horse Guards Parade’ were met with surprisingly little outrage, even in North London. It’s probably his irresistible mixture of ironic self-deprecation and discreetly selfaggrandising charm that carries him over chasms into which other politicians would plunge to their doom. But now, at least according to most of the UK media, Boris may have gone too far. Not because his latest speech – to London’s Centre for Policy Studies – might be suspected of suggesting that the present Prime Minister should pay more attention to the ‘colossal’ achievements of Margaret Thatcher in formulating his policy – it was entitled ‘What would Maggie do today’, but that’s not too provocative, is it? – but because he was seen to have blasphemed against the contemporary creed of human equality, an article of faith in Britain which everyone in public life honours but in which no-one actually believes. Like the England football team. Johnson claims that ‘Greed is Good’, cried the Guardian, invoking the monstrous bond trader of Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street’. He had explicitly encouraged, the paper said, the ‘Gordon Gekkos of London to be greedy’, had defended greed, envy and inequality as a necessary spur to economic activity and had ‘mocked the 16 per cent of our species with an IQ below 85’. Even the right-wing papers, the Telegraph and the Mail, headlined the story as ‘Johnson claims some people are just too stupid to get on in life’, while Deputy PM Nick Clegg shuddered at a ‘careless elitism’ that talked about people as if they were dogs.

“Was ever a man more misunderstood?” protested Johnson, although misrepresented might be closer to the truth. Take the Gekko reference. It’s true that the Mayor said that things were today moving so fast in London that it felt as though the 1980s were about to come round again. In fact he put it a lot more colourfully than that. The London economy, he said, “is starting to throb on the launching pad like a Saturn V…I sense a boom in the offing.” But he made it clear that he hoped that this time “it is NOT like the 1980s all over again,” not a return to “teddy bear braces” and Porsches and “riffling banknotes under the noses of the homeless.” This time, he hoped that “the Gordon Gekkos of London are conspicuous not just for their greed – valid motivator though greed may be for economic progress – as for what they give and do for the rest of the population.” What Johnson is saying is that despite the hopes of the left that after 2008 a new economic order would arise, nothing in fact has turned up – capitalism and the free market economy is still ‘the only show in town’. And he is realistic enough to know that capitalism will always be driven by self-interest, ambition, a hunger for success and, indeed, for wealth – greed if you like – that is not always pleasant to behold. He is also tuned in enough to see that this time there is a special problem. The harshness of competition in the globalised economy is increasing inequality, making the income gap between the most successful (in Boris-speak, the top cornflakes in the cereal packet) and the least wider than ever. This causes great popular resentment which is not at all assuaged by explaining how much tax the rich now pay (in the UK today the top one per cent of earners pay almost 30 per cent of income tax). People whose relative incomes are in what looks like continual decline simply think it’s all unfair.

Rustling the cornflakes What can be done? It would be madness to persecute the rich and stifle wealth creation and futile to try to stamp out inequality, says Johnson. What we need to do is to provide opportunity for those who can, potentially, compete in the harsh new race. As it is, there are too many cornflakes that aren’t being given a good enough chance to rustle and hustle their way to the top. It is more than 15 years since Tony Blair insisted that his three main priorities were education, education, education and things have only got worse; since 2000 English schoolchildren have slipped down the world rankings – from 8th to 27th in maths, 7th to 25th in reading and 4th to 16th in science. What is urgently needed, says Johnson, is the restoration of academic competition between children. That may sound like a truism but, in fact, it flies in the face of everything that the British educational establishment has believed for the past 60 years. Like it or not, education, like much of life, is a race and it benefits no-one to pretend that everyone can win. The middle classes in Britain understand this perfectly, as they fight to get their children into the most rigorously selective – and ruinously expensive – schools in the country. But what does ‘academic competition’ mean in terms of policy? More academies and free schools (independent from local authority control) for sure but Johnson knows very well that competition really means selection – to academically ambitious schools for the most able. That’s what Britain used to have, of course – Margaret Thatcher went to one – but here Boris gets uncharacteristically imprecise. He knows that even though most Tories agree with him they regard talk of reintroducing grammar schools as electoral suicide – many more losers than winners. What, then, would Maggie do? Maybe just n call them something else. Industry Europe 3

CONTENTS Editor Peter Mercer

Production Manager Kamila Kajtoch

Deputy Editor Victoria Hattersley

Administration Anna Chamberlain Amber Dawson Kayleigh Harvey

Profile Writers Abigail Saltmarsh Felicity Landon Piotr Sadowski Emma-Jane Batey Barbara Rossi Philip Yorke

Pharmaceutical Industry p6

Art Administration Tania Balderson Advertising Manager Andrew Briggs Sector Managers Matthew Howe Milada Preslova Massimo Ragazzo Helen Leisi Mac McCarthy Anthony McClintock Ben Snowing Anna Dudek Stephen Moore Martin Gisborne Victoria Pease

Art Director Gareth Harrey Art Editor Rob Czerwinski Designers Leon Esterhuizen Paul Abbott Claire Bidle Web Development Neil Robertson

Comment 1 5

Pharmaceutical Industry 6 9

IT Support Jack Everson

Opinion Room at the top Bill Jamieson Stuck in a box

Big pharma looks for a better year in 2014 Sarah Houlton reports

Pharmaceutical news The latest from the industry

News Industry Europe Alkmaar House, Alkmaar Way, Norwich, Norfolk, NR6 6BF, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1603 414444 Fax: +44 (0)1603 779850 Email: photos@industryeurope.net adcopy@industryeurope.net Web: www.industryeurope.net

12 14 16 17 18

Winning business New orders and contracts Linking up Combining strengths Moving on Relocations and expansions Industry people Appointments Technology spotlight Advances in technology

Reports 19 Focus on France Ian Sparks reports from Paris 20 Focus on Germany Allan Hall reports from Berlin

Agriculture

POSITIVE PUBLICATIONS

21 24 26

Time for forward thinking BZTDA Tyres for extreme conditions Nokian Tyres Tractors that make sense Farmtrac

A Square Root Company

Automotive 31 More than just a motorcycle Ducati Motor Holding 36 Perfection in your hands Wollsdorf

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4 Industry Europe

Construction 44 48

Energy-efficient building Huf Haus The geotechnical specialists Terratest

VOL 24/1

Above: Leybold p124

Electrical 52 Adding high performance to low voltage motors UMEB

Energy 56 Strength under pressure ATV 60 Powering ahead Riello Elettronica

Food 64 Dairy expert Lacpol Group Above: Ducati Motor Holding p31 Below: UMEB p52

Glass 68 Clear vision for growth Trakya Cam 72 Aiming for the best Lipik Glas

Above: Trakya Cam p68 Below: Golar LNG p80

HVAC & Refrigeration 75 Global refrigeration specialist EPTA Group

Marine 80 Setting a course for the midstream Golar LNG

Mechanical Engineering 90 A strong position ALTA 94 Going offshore Remazel Engineering 98 Designed to be faster WEISSER

Below: ATV p56

Mining & Tunnelling 102 In-depth success LNS

Above: WEISSER p98 Below: Lucite p110

Plastics 106 110 117

The customer cure Elmet Lucite International – ‘Going further’ Lucite International

Investing for global expansion TVK

Transport & Infrastucture 120 Advancing innovation in rail technology Kolejowe Zakłady Nawierzchniowe “Bieżanów”

Also in this issue... 124 Engineering success Leybold Optics Industry Europe 5

6 Industry Europe

COMMENT

BILLJAMIESON

Executive Editor of The Scotsman

Stuck in a box The global economy is picking up speed but Europe’s prospects still look bleak.

hile we struggle in the UK over our home-grown economic policies, it is the world outside that has a critical influence on our fortunes – the pace of growth in China, the resilience of developing country economies and in particular the performance of the eurozone. For the past three years chancellor George Osborne has routinely cited the eurozone crisis and the comatose economic performance of the euro-bloc as a heavy anchor slowing our own domestic recovery. But with high unemployment in the eurozone showing its first fall since 2010 and Ireland emerging from intensive care, might the tide at last be turning in Europe, with benefits to UK trade and exports? The good news is that the global economy overall is set for further acceleration in 2014. Citigroup forecasters expect the growth pace to quicken, from 2.4 per cent this year to about 3.1 per cent next, the best performance since 2010. Growth in the mature advanced economies is expected to improve from 1.1 per cent this year to about two per cent in 2014. The UK and US look set to enjoy growth of around three per cent. But it is quite a different picture for the eurozone. Growth in the third quarter was just 0.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter, down from a 0.3 per cent growth rate in the preceding three months. Exports could only manage an improvement of 0.2 per cent. A slippage in retail sales in October hardly suggests that a strong upturn is just around the corner. France reported a GDP dip of 0.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter, sparking renewed concerns about its underlying competitiveness. Meanwhile the German growth rate more than halved in the third quarter compared to the opening three months of the year. Spain managed a growth rate of just 0.1 per cent. Italy marked time.

For the year overall, the euro-bloc is likely to have suffered a contraction of 0.4 per cent. As for next year, it is unlikely to do much better than 0.8 per cent After months of relative calm in financial markets, and with Ireland now free of its reliance on IMF emergency assistance, it is tempting to believe European politicians when they declare the worst to be over for the 17-member single currency zone. But its crisis is far from over. And the longer its high rate of unemployment persists, the more doubtful the assertion becomes that the worst really is behind it.

For the year overall, the euro-bloc is likely to have suffered a contraction of 0.4 per cent. As for next year, it is unlikely to do much better than 0.8 per cent. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, recently warned that long-term prospects for eurozone growth look bleak unless politicians act urgently to boost domestic demand and tackle youth unemployment. She warned against prematurely declaring an end to the economic crisis. “Can a crisis really be over when 12 per cent of the labour force is without a job? When unemployment among the youth is in very high double digits, reaching more than 50 per cent in Greece and Spain? And when there is no sign that it is becoming easier for people to pay down their debts?” High youth unemployment, she added, could jeopardise the economy’s ability to grow, by creating a generation of young people without the skills to take their place in the

jobs market. “What is at stake is Europe’s potential for growth in the future,” she said. She has called for a package of reforms, including fixing the banking sector to ‘jumpstart growth’, and warned that with monetary policy all but exhausted, and interest rates already close to zero, governments might yet need to resort to a new fiscal stimulus if recovery fails to take hold. She even took a side-swipe at Germany, which has tended to rely on an export-led growth model. Boosting Europe’s growth potential, she says, will require stoking demand at home too. “Most of the demand for European goods and services comes from abroad, not from within, leaving the economy at the mercy of the ups and downs of global trade. European demand for European products remains lacklustre.”

No quick fix But we have heard calls for reform ‘packages’ many times before. Fixing the banking system is a slow and complex process, difficult to undertake without reducing the ability of eurozone banks to undertake the expansion of business lending that Brussels wants to see. And what more can the European Central Bank do, given that it has recently cut interest rates to stave off deflation? This leaves the tricky business of labour market reform – making it easier for skilled employees to cross Europe’s borders in search of work, cutting employment regulation and shifting the burden of taxation from income to consumption – in the hope of boosting employment. But all these present political difficulties, with eurozone governments and labour organisations strongly opposed to measures that are seen to undermine job security. Because of that, Europe remains in an economic and political box and unable to escape without disruptive social consequences. The hard haul of recovery still les n ahead of it. Industry Europe 7

The pharma industry has had a hard time recently, from accusations of poor quality control and price fixing to a rapid growth in fake drugs. But, as Sarah Houlton reports, new drugs are still being approved and global growth is set to return.

BIG PHARMA LOOKS FOR A BETTER YEAR IN 2014 I

t’s been a bad year for pharmaceutical manufacturing, with headlines about recalls, quality failures and fines making for depressing reading. Indian company Ranbaxy, for example, has had many run-ins with the US FDA about product quality in recent years, and in May it agreed a half-billion dollar settlement with the US Department of Justice for previous manufacturing failures. Despite this, more than 30 products from two of the company’s Indian production sites remain banned in the US, and imports from a third facility were also banned in September. These issues have encouraged the FDA to increase its number of inspectors in India by more than half. It’s not the only Indian company running into trouble in the west, however. In the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recalled five of 8 Industry Europe

Wockhardt’s Indian-made products, citing deficiencies in validation, production controls and record keeping. This was a worrying postscript to the recall of three other products in March that were made at a different plant, where poor cleaning practices and forged documents had been discovered. This same site was slammed by the FDA in July, and an import ban was issued, with problems including hiding paperwork and – alarmingly – the presence of standing pools of urine near the sterile production area. Western companies, too, were the subject of major concerns. For example, Boehringer Ingelheim is taking the drastic step of closing its Ben Venue subsidiary in the US after it failed to correct deficiencies that had been identified in its sterile injectables production a couple of years earlier. Sandoz, the generics subsidi-

ary of Novartis, was warned when inspectors found particulates in injectables made at a plant in Austria. And drugs due for launch by both Allergan and Exemplar Pharma in the US were delayed after regulators expressed concern about their manufacturing procedures. Corruption was also a running theme through the negative news stories about the industry in 2013. A number of senior staff at GlaxoSmithKline China were arrested amid allegations that they had bribed doctors and officials to sell GSK products, and the company’s general manager in China lost his job. Since then, the spotlight has fallen on a number of other western pharma companies with operations in China, and the authorities have also made visits to companies such as AstraZeneca, Bayer, Eli Lilly, Novartis and Sanofi. Perhaps unsurprisingly, sales have been hit.

In the US, Johnson & Johnson was fined $2.2 billion for a variety of mis-selling practices for three of its drugs, two antipsychotics and one heart medicine. These included off-label promotion, where reps encouraged doctors to prescribe the drugs for un-approved conditions, and kick-back payments to healthcare providers. With several companies having faced huge fines for similar behaviour in recent years, and investigations continuing, this is unlikely to be the last such penalty. Other legal cases – on both sides of the Atlantic – surround pay-for-delay deals between pharma and generics companies. Essentially, the inventor company will pay a generic company not to launch a rival product as soon as it might, thus preventing competition for a while. In the US, where the Free Trade Commission is putting a lot of effort into investigating these deals, the Supreme Court has now ruled that this activity should be subject to antitrust scrutiny, in contrast to earlier decisions in lower courts. Back in Europe, a total of almost €150 million in fines were doled out. Lundbeck was penalised to the tune of €94 million for preventing generic competition to its antidepressant citalopram (Celexa/Cipramil), with other fines going to seven other com-

panies, including Merck KGaA and Ranbaxy. Numerous other cases remain unresolved, against companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Servier and Teva.

Consolidation and downsizing One activity that was again notable by its absence from the pharma sector in 2013 was the mega-merger. However, numerous smaller deals did take place. Amgen’s acquisition of Onyx, which makes cancer treatments, was the largest, topping $10 billion. Fragment-based drug discovery company Astex was acquired by Japanese company Otsuka, and Allergan bought neurology specialist MAP Pharmaceuticals, with both deals coming in under the billion-dollar mark. Downsizing has continued. Merck & Co is shedding more than 8500 more jobs business-wide, representing more than 10 per cent of its workforce. It is closing two sites in New Jersey, and refocusing its research portfolio. AstraZeneca announced that it would stop research at its Alderley Park, UK site, moving it – and its global headquarters – to Cambridge. Another UK site is closing, too – the Novartis site in Horsham, which had already been downsized a couple of years ago. And Teva is also cutting about 10 per cent of its 50,000 staff, shuttering excess manufacturing capacity.

Intellectual property rights in India continue to worry western pharma companies. In April, the country’s Supreme Court threw out an appeal against the Indian authorities’ refusal to allow patent protection for Novartis’ leukaemia drug imatinib (Glivec/ Gleevec). Product patents have only been possible in India since 2005 – before that only processes could be patented, which led to the thriving generics sector in the country, where chemists became expert at reengineering synthetic routes to circumvent patents. Yet India has often been reluctant to grant patents, with various other companies having been impacted in the past, including Pfizer, Merck & Co and Bayer.

Fake drugs Another issue that continues to cause concern is counterfeit medicines, with internet pharmacies providing an easy route from criminal to customer. Indeed, the World Health Organisation estimates that more than half of all drugs bought from websites that do not include a physical address are fake. The unscrupulous counterfeiters are looking to profit from selling medicines that contain no active or sub-therapeutic doses, or even a completely different drug molecule. Fakes are still being seized; for example, the authorities in Switzerland found and confisIndustry Europe 9

cated more than a million fake tablets that were copies of Pfizer’s alprazolam (Xanax), en route from China to Egypt. They had no active – but looked like the genuine article. Interpol has now joined up with 29 pharma companies to raise public awareness of the problem. Industry has provided €4.5 million in funding to aid Interpol in its pharmaceutical crime programme that targets the organised crime networks commonly responsible for counterfeit medicines entering the supply chain.

New approvals On a more positive note, the recent upward trend in terms of new drug approvals has continued. As well as the usual collection of drugs to treat cancer and diabetes, there were a number of interesting developments. Perhaps surprisingly, bearing in mind the fact that Pfizer’s Viagra is at the end of its patent life, a fourth drug in this class was approved. Vivus will be hoping that its new erectile dysfunction drug avanafil (Spedra) will sell well, despite the additional expense of buying the pills, because it starts working more quickly after it is taken. Antibody–drug conjugates are currently the focus of a lot of research activity, and European regulators approved Genentech’s trastuzumab

10 Industry Europe

emtansine (Kadcyla). This is a combination of the antibody in Herceptin, which targets a specific subset of breast cancer cells, with a highly potent cytotoxic drug. The idea is that the antibody delivers the cancer-killing drug specifically to those cancer cells. While it is not the first conjugate drug to be approved, the only other one to reach the market thus far – Wyeth’s Mylotarg – was withdrawn in 2010 due to lack of efficacy. While biosimilars remain a distant dream in the US, in Europe there are now generic versions of a monoclonal antibody for the first time. Janssen’s infliximab (Remicade) blocks tumour necrosis factor alpha, and has been used for the past 15 years to treat autoimmune disorders such as psoriasis, ankylosing spondylisis, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, and both rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis. Two companies – Hospira and Celltrion – can now sell their own versions to patients. However, pharma companies remain extremely concerned that many governments and other payers are reluctant to pay for new medicines, and the relentless downward pressure on prices. In the UK, for example, the latest version of the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme, a five-year pricing deal between industry and government, will keep spending on branded medicines flat for two

years. Meanwhile, industry will underwrite any further NHS expenditure on medicines, within agreed boundaries. Prices will then be allowed to rise at an agreed rate. This is clearly something of a compromise for industry. Trade association the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry reminded government that industry has played its part in cost-cutting, and now those who make prescribing rules need to improve patient access to the latest medicines. On a positive note, 2014 is set to be a better one for the industry, at least in terms of market growth. The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics claimed in November that the overall annual global medicines spend would likely exceed $1 trillion for the first time in 2014. It is forecasting a global compound annual growth rate for pharma between 3 per cent and 6 per cent in the next five years. However, the lion’s share of the growth will not be in the traditional markets of the EU, US and Japan, where they anticipate growth will be just 1–4 per cent. The market in those countries they deem ‘pharmerging’, largely in Asia and Latin America, is set to grow by 10–13 per cent. There is little wonder that big pharma has put such a huge focus on gaining market share in these countries in recent years. It’s n a trend that’s sure to continue.

NEWS

New developments in the Pharmaceutical industry

Sanofi and Regeneron’s Dupilumab named ‘Clinical Advance of the Year’

INDUSTRYNEWS

Shire to acquire ViroPharma S

hire plc and ViroPharma Incorporated have entered into a merger agreement pursuant to which Shire will acquire all the outstanding shares of the rare disease company ViroPharma for $50 per share in cash, for a total consideration of approximately $4.2 billion. ViroPharma is a high growth, rare disease biopharmaceutical company, whose commercial product CINRYZE® (C1 esterase inhibitor [human]), is a leading brand for the prophylactic treatment of Hereditary Angioedema (HAE). Shire chief executive officer, Flemming Ornskov MD, comments: “The acquisition of ViroPharma will immediately benefit Shire and is entirely consistent with our clear strategic objective of strengthening our rare disease portfolio. It brings us a new growth driving product which augments our already strong growth prospects.” Visit: www.shire.com

AstraZeneca appoints architect for new global R&D centre

anofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. have announced that the Phase 2a study of dupilumab in asthma was named ‘Clinical Advance of the Year’ by Scrip Intelligence at the 9th annual Scrip Awards. Dupilumab is a fully human monoclonal antibody that is in clinical development for treatment of asthma, atopic dermatitis, and nasal polyposis. Dupilumab is being developed by Regeneron and Sanofi. George D. Yancopoulos, M.D., Ph.D., president, Regeneron Laboratories and chief scientific officer, said, “We appreciate the recognition by Scrip that dupilumab is one of the most exciting emerging clinical candidates in the industry. We also feel that this award is an additional validation of the overall depth and productivity of of our R&D team and the powerful VelociSuite® technologies they employ.” Visit: www.sanofi.com

Almirall submits aclidinium and formoterol fixed dose combination for COPD registration in Europe

lmirall, SA has announced the submission of the Marketing Authorisation Application (MAA) to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for the fixed combination of aclidinium bromide (LAMA) and formoterol fumarate (LABA)

straZeneca has selected architects Herzog & de Meuron to design its new centre in Cambridge in the UK. The site, to be located on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC), will be home to one of three global strategic R&D centres and the company’s corporate headquarters, housing a highly-skilled workforce of approximately 2000. The £330 million investment in Cambridge will create a working environment that fosters innovation in one of the world’s pre-eminent biosciences hotspots, ultimately helping AstraZeneca improve pipeline productivity. Herzog & de Meuron have been briefed to design a site that will support AstraZeneca’s

drive for scientific leadership. A central hub of labs will form the focal point for the new centre, which will encourage collaborative working across the organisation and provide easy access for the wider scientific community through an open design and ‘campus’ environment. Visit: www.astrazeneca.com

GSK’s RELVAR® ELLIPTA® receives European marketing authorisation

laxoSmithKline plc (GSK) and Theravance, Inc. have announced that the European Commission has granted marketing authorisation for RELVAR® ELLIPTA®, which is now licensed across 31 European countries for the treatment of Asthma and COPD. Relvar is a combination of the inhaled corticosteroid (ICS), fluticasone furoate ‘FF’, and the long-acting beta2-agonist (LABA), vilanterol ‘VI’ (FF/VI). Darrell Baker, SVP & Head, GSK Global Respiratory Franchise, said, “For many years GSK has been focused on developing a portfolio of new treatments for patients across the world with asthma and COPD. We are delighted that Relvar Ellipta is now licensed, which means that healthcare professionals across Europe will have the option to prescribe an ICS/LABA that offers 24-hour efficacy from a once-daily dose.” Visit: www.gsk.com for the treatment of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). “The success of this Phase III program supports the potential of aclidinium/ formoterol as a new treatment option for COPD patients who could benefit from the enhanced bronchodilation of two complementary, proven therapies,” said Professor Alvar Agusti, director of the

Institut Clínic del Tòrax, Hospital Clínic, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. He continued: “The reliable bronchodilation and symptoms’ improvements during the day and at night demonstrated by the combination provide a new highly efficacious and safe treatment option,” he added. Visit: www.almirall.com Industry Europe 11

NEWS

New developments in the Pharmaceutical industry

Global survey investigating early Type 2 Diabetes launched by Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly

Merck invests in research Roche and Polyphor join efforts to combat partnerships in Israel the global pharmaceutical, chemical multi-drug-resistant Merck, and life science company, is increasingly counting on partnerships with Israeli biotech combacterial infections panies, as demonstrated by its cooperation with

oehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly and Company have announced the launch of the largest multinational survey to investigate early conversations between physicians and people living with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). The survey was developed in partnership with the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and will include more than 10,000 people with T2D and more than 6500 treating-physicians across 26 countries worldwide. The findings will provide in-depth insights into early conversations at diagnosis and when an additional therapy may be required beyond the first medication. The survey will also investigate how these early conversations may be linked to an individual’s wellbeing and other self-reported outcomes. Early and comprehensive management of T2D has been shown to lead to better outcomes and the reduction of diabetes-related complications. Effective communication between a person living with T2D and their physician right from diagnosis may increase the individual’s satisfaction and adherence, improve quality of life, enhance self-care, and may even improve blood glucose control and outcomes. Visit: www.boehringer-ingelheim.com

Bayer HealthCare, Inception Sciences and Versant Ventures join forces

ayer HealthCare has entered into an exclusive collaboration with Inception Sciences, Inc. and Versant Ventures. Inception Sciences and Bayer will jointly conduct early research in the area of ophthalmology, in a newly created company called ‘Inception

12 Industry Europe

oche and Polyphor Ltd have entered into an exclusive worldwide license agreement to develop and commercialise Polyphor’s investigational macrocycle antibiotic, POL7080, for patients suffering from bacterial infections caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Antimicrobial resistance represents a major threat to public health worldwide, leading to 25,000 deaths and related costs of over €1.5 billion in healthcare expenses and productivity losses in the European Union alone each year. POL7080 belongs to a new class of antibiotics that kills Pseudomonas aeruginosa by a novel mode of action. It has demonstrated clinical safety and tolerability in a Phase I clinical trial and holds promise for the treatment of serious bacterial infections caused by multi-drug-resistant Pseudomonas species. Visit: www.roche.com

Metabomed and ChanBio, both of which have now joined the Merck Serono Israel Bioincubator. Merck is already cooperating with multiple Israeli start-up companies such as Qlight Nanotech, as well as research institutes such as the Weizmann Institute of Science as it seeks innovations that could become the basis for future products. “The innovative landscape of Israel fits in perfectly with our ‘Living Innovation’ claim,” said Stefan Oschmann, Merck’s executive board member responsible for the Pharmaceuticals businesses. “In Israel we not only have a past which has led to some of Merck’s most important products like Rebif and Erbitux, but also a promising future because we continue to find very interesting and cutting-edge science and the support here in Israel to translate that science into products.” Visit: www.merck.com

Novartis honoured by Malaria No More

recognition of Novartis’s significant on-going contributions to malaria control and elimination, the company has been honoured with the Global Corporate Citizenship Award at the Malaria

4’. The goal of this new alliance is to develop treatment options, focused on a novel target and pathway, for patients with eye diseases, such as wet age-related macular degeneration and geographic atrophy. Prof. Andreas Busch, head of global drug discovery and member of the executive Committee of Bayer HealthCare, says: “Bayer is strongly committed to expanding

No More International Honours annual benefit. Since 2001 Novartis has delivered more than 600 million antimalarial treatments to malariaendemic countries across Africa, without profit. The company also adopts an innovative approach in its long-standing efforts to eliminate malaria and has invested in partnerships to maximise the impact of its efforts. In 2009, in collaboration with Medicines for Malaria Venture, Novartis was first to develop a sweet-tasting dispersible artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) treatment specifically for infants and children. Visit: www.novartis.com its research efforts in the area of ophthalmology. In addition to this collaboration, numerous substances addressing retinal eye diseases are currently investigated in early research stages at Bayer. Furthermore, we are working on a promising novel drug candidate with an alternative mode of delivery as an eye drop.” Visit: healthcare.bayer.com

INDUSTRYNEWS Pfizer acquires Poland’s leading over-thecounter heart attack prevention brand

fizer Inc. has announced that a wholly-owned Polish subsidiary of Pfizer has acquired the rights to Polocard, a low-dose aspirin (acidum acetylsalicylicum), and the leading over-thecounter (OTC) brand for heart attack prevention in Poland, from ZF Polpharma SA. “Polocard is a top OTC brand in Poland, and its acquisition will enhance our Consumer Healthcare portfolio and overall position in this key market,” said Paul Sturman, president, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare. “We continue to focus on strategic opportunities that will expand our portfolio of leading brands, develop capabilities in high-growth categories and extend our global reach.” Visit: www.pfizer.com

BioAlliance approval to start ReLive (Livatag®) Phase III clinical trial

ioAlliance Pharma SA, an innovative company dedicated to the development of orphan oncology and to supportive care products, announces that it has received authorisation to start its Phase III ReLive clinical trial in primary liver cancer in the US (IND approval), following the review of the Livatag® development program by the FDA, as well as in Germany after the German health agency green light. “The deployment strategy planned was to implement the clinical trial first in France, then to expand it to Europe and then to the United States in 2014. The schedule is currently fully respected as the study is already implemented in Europe since last summer, and clinical operations will

now be able to start in the U.S in order to open investigating centres,” stated Pierre Attali, COO in charge of Strategy and Medical Affairs. Visit: www.bioalliancepharma.com

uniQure selected as Fierce 15 Company by FierceBiotech

Xigduo™ receives positive CHMP opinion in the European Union

niQure BV has been named by FierceBiotech as one of 2013’s Fierce 15 biotechs, designating it as one of the most promising private biotechnology companies in the industry. This is FierceBiotech’s eleventh annual Fierce 15 selection. “Once a barren wasteland of broken dreams, the gene therapy field has come alive in recent years with the help of companies like uniQure,” says FierceBiotech editor John Carroll. “There are plenty of challenges ahead, but the approval in the European Union of uniQure’s Glybera, the first gene therapy drug approved in the Western world, and other recent achievements bode well for the company’s future.” Visit: www.uniqure.com

Lilly celebrates 50 years of UK manufacturing plant

illy staff recently celebrated 50 years of the Speke, Liverpool, manufacturing site. First acquired by Lilly in 1963, the multi-award-winning Speke manufacturing site was originally commissioned by the UK government during the Second World War to produce penicillin for military

straZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb have announced that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has adopted a positive opinion recommending approval of Xigduo™ (dapagliflozin and metformin hydrochloride) for adults aged 18 and older with

and civilian use. At that time, Speke was the largest penicillin manufacturing plant in the world. Today, the site retains its global impact. As one of more than 20 manufacturing sites for global pharmaceutical company Lilly, Speke exports 95% of its products to 70 different countries around the world. Lilly’s operations in Speke specialise in

type 2 diabetes mellitus as an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycaemic control in patients inadequately controlled on their current metformin-based treatment regimen, or who are currently being treated with the combination of dapagliflozin and metformin as separate tablets. Xigduo™ combines dapagliflozin (tradename Forxiga®), a selective and reversible inhibitor of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2), and metformin hydrochloride in a twice daily tablet. This is the first CHMP recommendation for a SGLT2 and metformin hydrochloride fixed dosage combination. The final European Commission decision will be applicable to all 28 European Union member countries plus Iceland and Norway. Visit: www.astrazeneca.com or www.bms.com fermentation and biotechnology, mainly manufacturing animal health products for Elanco, Lilly’s animal health division. Over the past 50 years, Speke has manufactured many of Lilly’s medicines, including biosynthetic insulin – a world first – and a number of medicines for the treatment of depression and tuberculosis. Visit: www.lilly.com Industry Europe 13

NEWS

New contracts and orders in industry

Concentric oil and ‘smart’ water pumps for Euro truck engines C

oncentric AB has signed a multi-year contract with a global truck manufacturer to supply oil and variable flow water pumps for its new 11-litre engine which is designed to meet the requirements of Euro 6/EPA13 legislation. Annual revenues will be in the region of MSEK 76, based on mature volumes of 30,000 engines per year across Europe and the US. This contract follows on from an earlier order announced in October 2012 from the same customer for water pumps on its new 13 litre engine, taking the total annual revenues anticipated for both contracts to approximately MSEK 148. Concentric has undertaken a significant investment programme to ensure that its oil and water pumps will be delivered ready for the introduction of the second, smaller engine at the start of 2014. Both water and oil pumps have been designed and developed by Concentric in close collaboration with the customer, with extensive use of Concentric’s expertise in fluid dynamics simulation to ensure optimised performance is achieved. Visit: www.concentricab.com

Nederman receives order worth SEK 25 million

ederman has received an order from Kremenchuk Steel Works Stockholding Company in Ukraine to supply complete solutions for the filtration of gas dust from their steel making furnaces. The order is worth SEK 25 million. The order includes filters, cabinets, installation and training and everything will be produced at the Nederman manufacturing unit in Poland. “This is a substantial order and it shows that our customers value our ability to create ecoefficient production for them with both financial and environmental benefits,” says Sven Kristensson, Nederman’s CEO. The order is booked in the fourth quarter and installation is planned for the first six months of 2014. Kremenchuk Steel Works Stockholding Company manufactures and supplies cast parts for four-wheel and six-wheel goods wagon bogies, and automatic coupling devices in Ukraine and internationally. Visit: www.nederman.com

Driveline contract win in Brazil and India for KA

ongsberg Automotive (KA) has been awarded a contract for the supply of a complete manual gearshift system from a major European OEM. The shifter system will be used in B Segment cars which will be sold in India and South America. The contract has a total value of €33 million

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Alfa Laval wins offshore oil and gas order worth SEK 90 million A

lfa Laval – a world leader in heat transfer, centrifugal separation and fluid handling – has won an order from a South Korean company

for freshwater generators to an offshore oil platform in Norway. The order, booked in the Energy & Environment segment, has a value of approximately SEK 90 million. Delivery is scheduled for 2014. The Alfa Laval freshwater generators will be installed onboard the platform where they will convert seawater into both potable and process water. The oil platform is located in the Norwegian part of the North Sea. “This order confirms a continued positive development of our oil and gas business and it proves that our equipment lives up to the industry’s high demands on reliability and uptime,” says Lars Renström, president and CEO of the Alfa Laval Group. Visit: www.alfalaval.com

over 4 years. Production will start at KA facilities in Jundiai (Brazil) and Gurgaon (India) in Q3 2015, and peak production volumes will be reached in 2018. KA’s presence in the BRIC countries, such as in the Brazilian market, represents an important growth opportunity for the company. Indeed, LMC Automotive expected South American passenger

car sales to grow by 7% this year and a further 5.2% in 2014. “Kongsberg Automotive has a unique position to be able to offer a global footprint and full system capability, which support our growth plans in the BRIC countries,” said Ian van Duijvenboode, sales & marketing vicepresident for KA’s Driveline business. Visit: www.kongsbergautomotive.com

WINNINGBUSINESS WEG to supply highvoltage motors for mine copper developments

Scania to deliver 156 city buses to Berlin

cania has received an order to provide 156 articulated buses to Berlin’s public transport provider, Berliner Verkehrsgesellschaft (BVG). The buses are scheduled for delivery between 2014 and 2017. “This order is strategically important for establishing Scania in the German bus market,” says Fredrik Dahlborg, sales director for Europe and Eurasia, Buses & Coaches at Scania. The delivery to BVG includes 156 Scania Citywide articulated buses powered by Euro 6 engines and automated gearboxes, as well as

a close cooperation for repair and maintenance needs. In fact, predictable maintenance costs and good fuel economy were the decisive factors that won the BVG order for Scania. The BVG order is Scania’s second major bus contract in Germany over a relatively short period of time. “We can supply solutions featuring our vehicles and service for city and express bus services that are attractive to passengers, and ensure high availability and low operating costs for our customers,” says Dahlborg. Visit: www.scania.com

Veidekke to build tunnel in Granvin

eidekke Entreprenør has entered into a contract with the Norwegian Public Roads Administration to build a tunnel and a new landslide-safe road past Haukanesberget on county road 7 in Granvin municipality. This

will be a turnkey contract valued at NOK 191 million, excluding VAT. County road 7 past Haukanesberget west of the centre of Granvin is the most landslide-prone road in Hordaland. The section has been top of Hordaland County’s list of landslide safety projects to be realised, and now the road will finally be secured against rock slides and falling snow and ice. Veidekke Entreprenør is to build a 1.4km tunnel, which will be named Folkedalstunnelen. In addition, Veidekke will build a total of 1km new open road on both sides of the tunnel. Work is to commence in the end of November and is to be completed in late autumn 2015. Visit: www.veidekke.no

Viking Supply Ships wins contract for 4 AHTS vessels

season is expected to commence around April / May each year. The total value of the contract’s firm period including mobilisation fee is around MUSD 120. The contract further adds to the company’s backlog, which now accounts for MNOK 2845 including charterer’s options, an increase of MNOK 1675 since 1 January

iking Supply Ships has entered into a contract with a major oil company for the charter of the AHTS-vessels ‘Loke Viking’, ‘Magne Viking’, ‘Brage Viking’ and ‘Balder Viking’. The contract applies to the drilling seasons 2014 and 2015, with options for the drilling seasons 2016 and 2017. The drilling

pproximately 50 of WEG’s H- and M-line machines have been chosen to drive production facilities at the largest single mine development in Kazakhstan, the Bozshakol Clay Project, by both volume and value. Owned by one of the world’s top copper producers, the Kazakhmys Corporation, the Bozshakol sulphide and clay complex has an estimated annual ore processing capacity of 30 million tonnes and will employ around 1000 people, with a similar number involved in the construction phase. “WEG is delighted to provide the Kazakhmys Corporation with reliable electric machines to ensure process efficiency, productivity and a high degree of reliability. Being a supplier for such a large-scale project really demonstrates WEG’s high level of engineering competence and expertise with complex international EPC business,” says Sergey Mushchenko, managing director at WEG CIS. The development phase of Bozshakol Clay Project in Kazakhstan began ahead of schedule, with pre-production mining scheduled for 2014 and the first ore to be processed at the concentrator by 2015. The capital cost for the project is in the region of £1.18 billion. Visit: www.weg.net

2013. With the recent contract the AHTS fleet has an estimated contract coverage including charterer options of 62% for 2014 and 57% for 2015. Viking Supply Ships is one of two business areas of Rederi AB Transatlantic, a leading Swedish shipping company with headquarters in Gothenburg. Visit: www.rabt.se Industry Europe 15

NEWS

Combining strengths

Acquisition strengthens Wacker’s Biologics activities

ACKER Biotech GmbH, a subsidiary of WACKER Chemie AG, has acquired a production site for bioengineered pharmaceutical proteins (biologics) – including the associated business – from BioNet Ventures GmbH. WACKER’s acquisition covers the assets of Scil Proteins Production at the SCIL site in Halle, eastern Germany, including the patent portfolio. WACKER will be continuing Scil Proteins Production’s existing customer partnerships. The Munich-based chemical group will also retain the SCIL staff. Founded in 2005, Scil Proteins Production has some 80 employees and operates a fermenter in Halle (eastern Germany) with a capacity of up to 1500 litres. Pharmaceutical actives can be produced in this fermenter for clinical trials and for market supply. The protein-refolding expertise held by Scil Proteins Production significantly complements WACKER’s know-how in its role as a full-service provider for the microbial manufacture of biologics. For proteins that cannot be produced in an active form in bacterial cells, refolding is a key technology in order to achieve the desired protein in the active form. Visit: www.wacker.com

Rejlers acquires engineering company in Finland

ejlers has acquired Sähköinsinööritoimisto Matti Leppä Oy. The acquisition strengthens Rejler’s expertise in the fields of Building and Property. The company has 20 employees in Turku, Finland. “The company will be integrated into Rejlers’ business, offering services to clients in Building and Property. This acquisition is consistent with Rejlers’ strategy to strengthen all its customer groups and it gives us a stronger position in the growing cities in Finland,” says Eva Nygren, president and CEO at Rejlers. Sähköinsinööritoimisto Matti Leppä Oy, founded in 1955 and based at Turku, is a company offering services within building service systems. Its revenue in 2012 was €1.8 million and it has 20 employees. The company will be consolidated as of 1 November 2013. Visit: www.reijers.se

Mekonomen enters cooperation agreement with Inter Cars

ekonomen has entered a cooperation agreement with the Polish company Inter Cars, which has a leading market position in eastern Europe. Mekonomen and Inter Cars will cooperate in the area of purchasing and logistics from the Far East, and co-own a product testing centre in Warsaw.

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Trelleborg takes over industrial tire distributor T relleborg has, through its business area Trelleborg Wheel Systems, signed an agreement to acquire the industrial tire business of the Italian company Pircher Alfred s.a.s. The business specialises in the distribution and service of industrial tires, such as those fitted on forklift trucks. The acquisition further strengthens and enlarges Trelleborg’s European industrial tire distribution network. The acquired business has distribution and service centres located in Milan and Bologna, Italy. Sales in 2012 amounted to approximately SEK 75 million. This bolt-on acquisition is part of Trelleborg’s strategy to strengthen its positions in attractive and profitable market segments. “The focus of globally leading forklift manufacturers is increasingly shifting toward expanding their presence in local markets. This trend suits our business and we see the potential to successfully develop and expand our Interfit service concept for industrial tires. The acquired operation commands a strong position in the Italian market and has solid

profitability. The transaction will strengthen our capabilities across the supply chain, from manufacturing to service of industrial tires,” says Maurizio Vischi, president of the Trelleborg Wheel Systems business area. Visit: www.trelleborg.com

Inter Cars is the biggest importer and distributor of automotive spare parts for passenger cars and commercial vehicles in Poland and eastern Europe, with a presence in 11 countries. “We are very happy to announce this cooperation, which will provide both companies with advantages in our respective markets – a true win-win situation,” says

Marcus Larsson, executive vice-president Mekonomen Group. “Both companies are market leaders in their regions. Close cooperation will help us to optimise several processes, such as purchasing, logistics and testing of products sourced from these countries,” says Robert Kierzek, president and CEO, Inter Cars. Visit: www.mekonomen.se

LINKINGUP AkzoNobel agrees JV deal in Oman

kzoNobel has expanded its presence in the Middle East after acquiring a 50% stake and management control of Sadolin Paints Oman SAOC, which employs around 150 people. The company has signed a joint venture agreement with Omar Zawawi Establishment LLC (promoter and shareholder of Sadolin Paints) which involves the manufacture and sale of decorative paints and performance coatings in Oman. “This agreement forms part of AkzoNobel’s growths plans for the Middle East,” said Conrad Keijzer, the company’s executive committee member responsible for Performance Coatings. “Bringing our decorative paints and performance coatings expertise under one roof in Oman will provide a strong platform to support our customers in this increasingly important market.” Added Peter Tomlinson, managing director of AkzoNobel in the Middle East: “With governments investing more into construction, local production is becoming increasingly important. Our paints and coatings activities in Oman will now be well placed to effectively supply customers in the construction, transportation and oil and gas sectors.” Visit: www.akzonobel.com

Addtech acquires Valnor AS

ddtech Components, a business area in the Addtech Group, has signed an agreement to acquire all shares outstanding in Valnor AS. Valnor is a technology trading company, providing valves and accessories for instrumentation and piping systems. The company represents leading suppliers

ASSA ABLOY acquires Amarr in the US A

SSA ABLOY has signed an agreement to acquire Amarr, the third major player in the North American sectional door market, with a very strong and attractive market position. “Amarr is another important building block for the ASSA ABLOY Group in building global leadership within Entrance Automation. I welcome Amarr and its employees to the group, constituting the basis for further expansion on the North American market. Since 2008 we have rapidly expanded the Entrance Systems Division from SEK 3 billion to more than SEK 14 billion,” commented Johan Molin, president and CEO of ASSA ABLOY. ”Amarr’s size, product offering and market position give a strong footprint within sectional doors in North America. With Amarr onboard we are well positioned to apply the same rapid expansion of North America, like we have done

in Europe during the last few years,” commented Juan Vargues, executive vice-president of ASSA ABLOY and head of division Entrance Systems. The company was founded in 1951 and is based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with operations in the USA, Canada and Mexico. The company has 1200 employees. Visit: www.assaabloy.com

Atlas Copco acquires bolt-tightening solutions specialist

tlas Copco, a leading supplier of sustainable productivity solutions, has acquired UK-based Tentec Ltd, which develops and markets bolttightening solutions. The acquisition broadens Atlas Copco’s range of products and services offered to the oil and gas, power generation and mining industries. Tentec, based in West Bromwich, United Kingdom, has 65 employees and had revenues in 2012 of £9.8 million. The company, which was founded in 1988, specialises in hydraulic bolt tensioners. The tools, which are used in the assembly of heavy equipment, are sold globally and the main customer segments are the oil and gas, mining and power generation industries, including wind power.    “The acquisition of Tentec completes our portfolio of hydraulic bolt-tightening solutions that we are offering to several key industries,” said Mats Rahmström, business area president for within its product areas and commands a solid position in the Norwegian market to offshore oil & gas, shipping and onshore process industry. Valnor will very effectively complement Addtech’s operations in the business unit Addtech Components Norway. Valnor has 12 employees and sales of around NOK 50 million.

Atlas Copco Industrial Technique. “This will help enhance customers’ productivity and assembly process quality.” The acquired business becomes part of the General Industry Tools and Assembly Systems division within Industrial Technique, and the legal owner is Atlas Copco Holding UK Ltd. Visit: www.atlascopco.com

Mats Rahmström

The closing is estimated to take place in the beginning of December 2013 after approval is obtained from the appropriate authorities. The acquisition is expected to have a marginally positive effect on Addtech’s earnings per share during the current financial year. Visit: www.addtech.com

Industry Europe 17

NEWS

MOVINGON

Relocations and expansions across Europe

Solvay to build alkoxylation facility in North America Ionbond opens new corporate headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland

onbond, one of the world’s leading providers of PVD, CVD and PACVD coating services and CVD coating equipment, has opened its new corporate headquarters offices in Zurich. The move follows the acquisition of Ionbond by the IHI Corporation of Japan at the end of last year. The new headquarters will be home to Ionbond’s corporate management. IHI, which also owns Hauzer Techno Coating in Venlo, Netherlands, a leader in PVD and PACVD coating equipment, sees the new headquarters in Zurich as a central coordination point for its growth in coating services and equipment worldwide. Ionbond’s CEO Joe Haggerty said: “We are very pleased to open our new headquarters in Zurich. This location allows us to receive customers more easily upon their arrival in Switzerland and allows for more efficient coordination with our coating network.” Visit: www.ionbond.com

Middle East Propulsion Company expands its product portfolio

he leading Saudi Arabian engine maintenance company Middle East Propulsion Company has strengthened its position as a provider of military engine maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services for the whole of the Middle East region. In the four years since MTU’s acquisition of a 19% share in 2009, MEPC’s product portfolio has been continuously extended. The Middle East Propulsion Company has expanded its module maintenance work by winning contracts for the RB199, the engine powering the RSAF Tornado fleet. Furthermore, the MRO capability for the PT6 engine installed on the RSAF’s Pilatus PC-9 and PC-21 training aircraft has recently been established and the company is awaiting certification approval for maintenance work on the T56 engine that powers the RSAF fleet of C-130 Hercules. In addition to this expansion, MEPC has been awarded with a follow-on contract of the Pratt & Whitney F100-PW220 engines for the Boeing F15 beginning November 2013. Visit: www.mtu.de

Bosch UK opens new £1.2 million state-of-the-art facility

osch UK has opened a new state-ofthe-art facility designed to provide a single northern location for Bosch, which combines Bosch Rexroth, its industrial drives and controls company, and Worcester, Bosch Group, its heating and hot-water solutions company.

18 Industry Europe

olvay is to build and operate a large-scale alkoxylation unit in Pasadena, Texas, at an integrated industrial facility of LyondellBasell’s Equistar Chemicals affiliate, in order to serve a growing North American market. Equistar will supply the ethylene oxide raw material to the unit, in which Solvay will invest nearly €40 million and which is expected to be operational in 2015. “This is the latest in a series of strategic investments we have made to deploy capacity and product development assets to serve our customers in dynamic market segments,” said Emmanuel Butstraen, president of Solvay Novecare. “Spurred by a rebounding housing market and a dynamic manufacturing sector, the new facility will enable us to help our North America customers meet growing business opportunities in many markets.” Visit: www.solvay.com

Luso Electronics opens manufacturing facility

uso Electronics, a UK based supplier of satcom products, engineering components for machinery and power electronic products, has opened a new design and manufacturing facility that will boost the company’s delivery of fully integrated turn-key installations and microwave products to meet increasing demand, primarily from customers in commercial and military satellite communications. While most European microwave product providers simply supply components, Luso has been designing, developing, testing, installing and servicing tailored microwave and high-quality radio frequency (RF) systems and component solutions since 2001. The company’s new facility in Luton will strengthen its manufacturing capability, improve delivery time and offer greater flexibility to customers with specific design needs. RoHS compliant satcom products manufactured on site including Vsat antennas, switching systems, waveguide assemblies, filters, diplexers, adapters and associated electronic components. Visit: www.lusoelectronics.com

The new facility, located in Normanton, near Wakefield, consolidates three Bosch sites in the North of England into a single location. The facility, built on a 3.6-acre site, equivalent to two football pitches, will provide customer service and support to its Bosch Rexroth mechanical engineering customers and training to its installers in the heating and hot water sector.

Bosch Rexroth will design and manufacture hydraulic systems for many industry sectors, including marine, offshore and bulk materials handling, at its state-of-the-art Wakefield site. The site will also be a base for hydraulic training and courses which will be run throughout the year. Visit: www.boschrexroth.com

NEWS

INDUSTRYPEOPLE New managing director at BT Products AB

Millers Oils creates four new senior positions

ristian Björkman will join Toyota Material Handling Europe’s BT Products AB from 1 January 2014, bringing 18 years of expertise in manufacturing industries in an international environment. Kristian Björkman is today director of Global Manufacturing at DeLaval (Tetra Laval Group) and is responsible for over 10 international operations including Sweden. “Mr Björkman is an enthusiastic, goal-oriented person with a wide international business experience in manufacturing. I believe he can lead our largest site to the next level to optimise operational efficiency based upon well implemented Toyota Production System (TPS) and our continuous improvements initiatives ‘Kaizen’,” says Matthias Fischer, CEO at Toyota Material Handling Europe, chairman of the board, BT Products.

DEUTZ CFO elected as new chairwoman of kölnmetall

Margarete Haase, DEUTZ board member for finances, personnel and investor relations has been elected by the Cologne employer’s association kölnmetall to the position of the new chairwoman. With her election, the highest honorary office of this tradition-rich Cologne employers’ association will be occupied by a woman for the first time ever in history. Dr Margarete Haase, who came to DEUTZ AG in 2009 as a board member for the areas of finances, personnel and investor relations, has also been a board member of the employers’ association ever since this time. The Austrian born manager was honoured by the Financial Times Germany as the manager of the year in 2011.

From left to right, Stephen Halliwell, Mark Berry, Bob Howard, Jason Lavender

pecialist oil developer and producer Millers Oils is adding four new sector heads to its sales team to enhance the support and expertise available to the company’s customers and internal workforce. The creation of these senior positions is part of an internal programme that will help nurture skills and enable Millers to develop employees’ professional capabilities, strengthening the company’s breadth of knowledge and business offering as it continues to expand. Bob Howard, who originally joined the company in 2011 as export manager, has a new role as global key account manager (Industrial). Joining Bob as sector heads are Jason Lavender, business development manager for Motorsport and Classic, Mark Berry, business development manager for Automotive and Steve Halliwell, business development manager for Commercial Vehicle. “The Millers Oils name is synonymous with motorsport, its innovative and flexible approach to oil technology development, and I’m delighted to join such a dedicated team,” says Lavender.

Infrared vision specialist ULIS appoints chief technical officer

LIS, a manufacturer of high quality infrared (IR) imaging sensors for thermography, security and surveillance, automotive and military applications, has announced the appointment of Dr Christel-Loic (Chris) Tisse as chief technical officer. French-Australian Dr Tisse, 37, brings 13 years of specialist knowledge in optical (visible-light & thermal) imaging science to ULIS. He has extensive expertise in computational imaging, a multi-disciplinary field involving the co-design and joint-optimisation of optoelectronic methods, image sensors and image/video processing techniques. These are used to enhance or extend the capabilities of digital imaging systems.

Holcim further focuses its senior management

olcim has announced a series of changes in its most senior management that will further streamline and focus the leadership of the group. Member of the Holcim executive committee Bernard Terver will assume responsibility for Africa Middle East as

well as the Indian subcontinent. Onne van der Weijde will remain area manager for India and Javier de Benito will remain area manager for Africa Middle East, reporting directly to Bernard Terver. Member of the Holcim executive committee Ian Thackwray will become responsible for East Asia, South East Asia, Oceania and Holcim Trading. Daniel

Bach, currently CEO of Holcim Romania, will be appointed area manager for South East Asia and member of senior management of Holcim Ltd. Alain Bourguignon, currently CEO of Aggregate Industries UK, is appointed area manager for North America /UK and member of senior management of Holcim Ltd.

Industry Europe 19

NEWS

TECHNOLOGYSPOTLIGHT

Advances in technology across industry

Electricity generated from gravity Multifunction

exican entrepreneurs have developed a system capable of using the vehicular flow to generate electric energy. This development has the potential to produce sufficient electricity to power up a household through a device that ‘catches’ the force of the moving cars. “This is a technology that provides sustainable energy and could be implemented at low prices, since it’s a complement to already existing infrastructure: the concrete of streets and avenues,” Héctor Ricardo Macías Hernández, developer of the system, said. The technology consists in a system that integrates a ramp-step (elaborated with polymeric material similar to the ones used in the manufacture of tires) that elevates to five centimetres above the level of the street. When receiving the impact of the vehicle, this ramp exerts pressure over a bellows. This artifact contains air that is expelled at a certain pressure through a hose; later, this element travels to a tank where it is compressed and relaunched to an electricity generating turbine. Macías Hernández also said that the accumulation of electric energy is proportional to the flow of cars over a determinate spot; however, in places with low vehicular flow, several ramp-steps could be placed to multiply the impact of every individual vehicle. For further information, please contact: JoséGotésjose@invdes.com.mx

Storing heat from the Sun T

ogether with the company SchwörerHaus the Research and Test Centre for Solar Systems (TZS) of the Institute for Thermodynamics and Heat Technology (ITW) of the University of Stuttgart, in the framework of the project ‘Solspaces’, are developing a new heating concept in the building, combining solar heating with the long-term heat storage. After many years

20 Industry Europe

of development, this concept is to be tested for the first time now in a residential house. For this purpose a new type of building of the type ‘Flying Spaces’ from SchwörerHaus was supplied to the University of Stuttgart in Stuttgart-Vaihingen. Whilst everybody is talking about solar energy in terms of electricity, the provision of heat is doomed to a shadowy existence. One reason for this lies in the fact that the heat generated on sunny days needs to be stored for cold periods. Up to now this has been done in water storage tanks requiring a great deal of space. The heating concept pursued in the project ‘Solspaces’, in contrast, is based on a thermal solar system in connection with a sorption heat storage tank. This technology is characterised by energy density three to four times higher than water and enables a compact and almost loss-free heat storage. Visit: www.itw.uni-stuttgart.de

active aerodynamic system developed for new supercar

unique, multi-function active aerodynamic system has been developed by Prodrive Automotive Technology for use in a 200+mph supercar. The system uses both front and rear actuation systems to control vehicle downforce, providing features that enable the vehicle to continually modify aerodynamic forces to maintain optimum vehicle performance. Uniquely, the rear aero system is able to offer a variable lift and pitch position, providing the ability to increase downforce for optimum handling or decrease downforce in a Formula 1 style ‘DRS’ mode for higher straight line speed. The front and rear systems can be used in conjunction to balance the vehicle downforce. Delivering the complex, multi-disciplinary solution drew on Prodrive’s expertise in mechanical, electrical and hydraulic systems, as well as its experience working on time-critical programmes for major vehicle manufacturers. “The application was a very demanding, safety critical system,” explained Prodrive’s programme manager, Peter Tibbles. “The system had to withstand extreme aerodynamic loads, meet rapid deployment targets, while the packaging envelope and weight target were very tight.” Visit: www.prodrive.com

EURO-REPORT

FOCUS ON...

France Ian Sparks reports from Paris on more job losses and restrictions on e-cigarettes.

he European air and defence giant EADS is bracing itself for industrial action from its French workers after breaking a 13-year taboo on forced redundancies with the announcement it is to cut 5800 jobs from its defence and space divisions. EADS, the parent company of Toulousebased commercial plane-maker Airbus, saw its share price rise by almost one per cent as investors welcomed the cost-cutting plan in response to falling sales. The aerospace group said among the redundancies it would freeze the renewal of 1300 temporary contracts, and around 500 corporate posts would also be included in the reduction of its 140,000-strong workforce. EADS – owned by France and Germany with 12 per cent and Spain at four per cent and the rest floated on the market – needed to become more competitive and double its margins to ten per cent by 2015 in order to avert greater turmoil in the years to come, its chief executive Tom Enders said. He told an internal union meeting: “We need to act now, we cannot sit idle. Inaction would be irresponsible and would result in a much more severe situation for our employees and the performance of our company a few years down the road.” The restructuring would lead to a ‘substantial consolidation’ of EADS’ main sites across France, Germany, Spain and the UK, and would coincide with plans to merge the company’s manufacture of Eurofighter combat jets and Ariane space rockets into one unit, Enders said. He added later in a statement: “We need to improve our competitiveness in defence and space – and we need to do it now. Is it good management to wait until you drive into the wall? Or is it good management to be proactive and when you see the wall is coming, you hit the brakes and take measures?” But immediately following Enders’ announcement to the EADS works council,

France’s leading Force Ouvriere union warned it was prepared to use ‘any initiative at its disposal’ to resist compulsory redundancies. He also inflamed critics in his native Germany by confirming that the company headquarters would remain in the French city of Toulouse and that EADS would change its name to Airbus from next year. Ruediger Luetjen, the head of the EADS European works council and a leading member of Germany’s IG Metall union said: “To the works council and IG Metall, compulsory redundancies are not an option at EADS.” Berlin’s economy ministry said in a statement: “We appeal to the aerospace company to be as careful and socially circumspect as possible in cutting these jobs and assume that the cuts will not be to the disproportionate disadvantage of German sites.” France’s labour minister Michel Sapin also said he could not accept forced redundancies, telling news agency AFP: “This company makes money, and if it wants to restructure and adapt, fine. But it also has a duty to adopt measures to avoid any redundancies. It is not acceptable that a company like Airbus or EADS should cut overall employment while it still has the capacity to re-absorb anyone losing their job.”

Set-back for e-cigarettes Elsewhere in France, the makers of smoke-free electronic cigarettes have reacted with anger at a French court ruling that that only government-licensed tobacconists should have the exclusive right to sell the devices, which the country’s health ministry also want to have reclassified as ‘medicines’ and banned from public spaces. The commercial court of Toulouse also ruled that e-cigarettes should be subject to the same broad ban on advertising as their tobacco-based counterparts.

The rulings are being seen as a setback for France’s rapidly expanding e-cigarette vendors who say around 300 French stores dedicated to the products will be forced to close with the loss of more than 2000 jobs. E-cigarettes still only represent a tiny fraction of the multi-billion euro tobacco market, but their popularity is surging. Euromonitor International analyst Shane MacGuill said he expected global sales for e-cigarettes to reach about three million euros this year, with around 500 million of those in Western Europe. In France alone, the market for e-cigarettes was expected to more than double in 2014 to around 100 million euros, according to a study from the French office for the prevention of smoking. One e-cigarette maker Esmokeclean has said it will appeal the Toulouse ruling, which its lawyer Benjamin Echalier branded as ‘completely absurd’. Mickael Hammoudi, who heads a French e-cigarette lobby group, added: “The court went beyond its powers deciding on a matter that is not yet subject to a law. This puts 2500 jobs at risk.” All eyes are now on European Union legislators, who are grappling to come up with a regulatory framework for e-cigarettes. EU health ministers said this summer that liquids for e-cigarettes that contain at least two milligrams of nicotine per millilitre should be regulated as medicines, which would limit the sales of these products to pharmacies in many countries, including France. Also under discussion at EU level are bans on sweet flavourings that could make e-cigarettes attractive to teenagers as well as bans on refillable cartridges that some regulators fear could be dangerous for small children that accidentally ingest e-liquids. Negotiators from both the European Parliament, the EU Commission and EU member states have said they want to agree on panEuropean regulations for e-cigarettes by early n next year. Industry Europe 21

EURO-REPORT

FOCUS ON...

Germany Allan Hall reports from Berlin on the return to the East.

ass migration from the former Communist states of East Germany has finally ended 23 years after reunification. The slowly improving economy is behind the fall in people moving to the west according to the latest figures released by Berlin. The annual government report into Germany’s eastern states found that in 2012, for the first time since reunification in 1990, as many people moved to the east as went to the west. The report said the improved economic situation in the east was the main reason behind the trend. Factories that were decrepit ruins when the Iron Curtain fell have now been replaced by state-of-the-art facilities built by such concerns as BMW, Zeiss and Mercedes. Although wages are still lower, more and more people – particularly the young who are so desperately needed in the region – are heading east instead of west. After reunification the population of East Germany collapsed by 13 per cent as the young moved en masse to the west. From 2000 to 2005 an average of 66,000 people emigrated each year – but last year just 2000 people made the move. Christoph Bergner, the minister responsible for former East Germany, said the process needed more time, but that the signs are good for lasting improvement and prospects for growth. GDP in the eastern states has risen but wages are still around 80 per cent of the west but unemployment, meanwhile, has fallen to its lowest level since 1991. Yet at 10.7 per cent it is still almost double that of the west. “Despite the economic improvements, the states continue to face challenges,” the report said. Interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said: “There is still a backlog of issues. What happened in the past is a lasting problem.” Only recently another trend was noticed regarding the former German Democratic Republic. Homesickness combined with 22 Industry Europe

improved job prospects to drive East Germans who had left to return to the onceblighted towns and cities. Far-right extremism flourished in the void left behind as the east, a region of 17 million people when the iron curtain came down, lost upwards of 1000 people a day to the prosperous west. Decrepit state industries closed and females proved themselves more mobile than men who lost any prospect of a partner along with a job. Now it is finally changing. More people, for example, moved to the state of Saxony than away from it with Berlin and Brandenburg also

The annual government report into Germany’s eastern states found that in 2012 as many people moved to the east as went to the west. reporting positive net-migration rates. Although some of the new migrants are students escaping high tuition fees and rents, and pensioners seeking to stretch their pensions further, over half of those going back are returnees. Companies like VW have invested tens of millions of pounds in the former east with stateof-the-art factories that regenerated vast areas. The towns around Dresden are now high-tech centres of excellence which rival the best that America’s Silicon Valley has to offer and the UK’s GlaxoSmithKline is a major job provider. Eastern German communities have endured two decades of the kind of austerity measures now being piled on western towns as a result of the euro crisis. Consequently they are actually on the rise as huge western cities like Duisburg in the old industrial Ruhr struggle under a mountain of debt. Other surveys indicate that as many as two thirds of those who left to go west are now pondering a return home, exploding a myth that ‘wessis’ like to tell about ‘ossis’

that only those who failed to make the grade in the high-octane capitalism environment are those going home.

Alcoholic consolations So many things have changed in the former Communist enclave that people find it hard to forget how drab life really was there. A new book called ‘The Blue Strangler’, however, has been published to remind them of the grimness of things under Communism. The Blue Strangler was a favoured form of vodka that was mass produced and about the only thing that there wasn’t a shortage of. ‘The Blue Strangler: How the GDR Drank’ by Thomas Kochan is both amusing and tragic, a chronicle of how in the workers’ paradise every person – from child to oap – drank an average of 143 litres of beer, 12 litres of wine and 16 litres of spirits a year. It was higher than any other country in the Soviet empire. Alcohol became the narcotic which dulled the senses to the drab life that the German Democratic Republic forced upon its unwilling citizens, most of whom were fleeing in droves before the Berlin Wall went up on 13 August1961. While booze had no place on the production lines of the West German factories churning out the ‘economic miracle’, East German plants resembled vast industrial pubs. “It was a societal thing,” said Kochan. “You drank when you started work, to greet the boss, during breaks, at the end of the day, and especially so if you were going on holiday. And of course on works’ beanos.” Most East Germans drank liqours made from potatoes, corn and sugar beets because such things were not among the state’s shortages. The quality was poor but the alcohol content could have fuelled the engines of the Space Shuttle. Those days are gone forever. And, hope the politicians, gone with them are the days n of mass exodus to the west.

TIME FOR FORWARD THINKING Belarusia’s Bobruisk Plant of Tractor Parts and Units (BZTDA) has implemented a business model that has helped its development from a small workshop to a modern industrial company. Mr Vasil Tsaryk, deputy director of sales and marketing, spoke to Vanja Švačko.

ZTDA is located in one of the oldest Belarusian cities, Bobruisk on the Berezina River, known for machine building, metal and chemical industries. The company plays an important role in Belarusian industry, mainly in agriculture. Mr Tsaryk said, “Since the end of the World War II we were slowly transforming the small facility from a workshop for tractors, dealing with the repair of tractor engines, manufacture and recovery of spare parts for tractors and

agricultural machines, into a large company producing agricultural equipment. At the end of the 1950s our production shifted to the new lines, taking advantage of modern equipment and the latest technologies.” Today the plant employs some 3700 people and manufactures key components and parts for the world’s largest tractor manufacturer MTZ (Minsk Tractor Works). It includes original assemblies for a range of tractors produced under the MTZ brand.

Expanding product portfolio Faced with increasing market demand, the company continues to expand the range of its products. It now produces its own tractors as well as consumer goods (for gardens and homes) and spare parts that include wheels, front axle-levers, support, power take-off, power train parts, transfer boxes, clutches, high-pressure hoses, steering control, seats, pins, fuel pipelines etc. for tractors and related utility vehicles. Industry Europe 21

Although they are produced on a small scale, Belarus-311/320/321/422/622 tractors and their modifications, which range from 30 to 60 h.p. are suitable for various kinds of agricultural and transport work. What makes them stand out among the competition are their high fuel efficiency, as well as performance effectiveness when it comes to work in the most adverse conditions. Like other products from BZTDA that are certified by STB ISO 9001:2009 and now adapting to the new ISO/TS 16949:2010, these tractors are also in compliance with international standards. They have won awards at several international exhibitions as the best agricultural products with the highest performance quality. As a result of the success with Belarus-320 tractors, the factory has embarked on the production of several variants, such as a loading machine Belarus MP-320, sweeper Belarus ME-320, machine-loading-harvesting Belarus MPU-320, as well as the Belarus-422.1, Belarus-422 and Belarus-622 tractors. The latest tractor models are the Belarus-321 and a new model tractor Belarus-311, manufactured for the first time in 2010. With such an intensive production and introduction of new models BZTDA covers about 20 per cent of national tractor production. “Today we are at the point where our production has expanded from tractor wheels to other types of vehicles, with more than 3000 tractors (in nine different models) produced in 2012. Our current plan is to 22 Industry Europe

enlarge production of both wheels and tractors. Although the spare parts are not produced any more in mass quantities, there are still 1500 original parts manufactured for tractors Belarus,” explained Mr Tsaryk.

Markets to be conquered Along with increasing its production capacities, the company is working on modernising its distribution networks since BZTDA products are in demand in almost 50 countries. With 63 per cent of the products ending up abroad, the company can say that its business is export-oriented. BZTDA has a large number of dealer centres and joint ventures all over the world. “We have joint ventures in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Scandinavia, central, west and south Europe, Asia, Africa and some new partnerships in Central America,” explained Mr Tsaryk. “The greatest growth prospects we now see are in reaching the markets in east Asia (Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Bangladesh). When it comes to other markets, we are actively cooperating with Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico etc. We are familiar with the corporate ethics in those countries and successfully collaborate with them. We believe there is further scope for similar partnerships like these in future. There are also possibilities of greater participation in the African market, although we are already present there with our tractors.”

SAFE BRAKING OAO TIIR develops, manufactures and sells clutch facings, disk brake pads and drum brake linings for all models of cars and trucks as well as friction disks and friction facings for friction units and clutches of agricultural machines (OEM, OES, Aftermarket). Disk brake pads developed and produced by OAO TIIR are supplied to the assembly lines and service stations of Daimler, Chevrolet, Ford and Land Rover. OAO TIIR Moskovsy ave., 149 | 150048 Yaroslavl | Russia E-mail: tiir@yaroslavl.ru | www.tiir.ru

Fruitful investments With regard to investing, Bobruisk Plant of Tractor Parts and Units is working on its own energy sources by creating a demonstration area of energy efficiency. In 2012 the old production line for wheels was put in operation after being modernised and overhauled. Activation of a new production line increased capacity to 500,000 wheels. Apart from covering the domestic Belarusian market, Russia and Ukraine are still the most attractive business destinations for the company because it sells the largest number of wheels there. Encouraged by the

business success, the leadership of BZTDA is considering the future development of particular tractor lines and expansion to the new markets. “We are planning to base our future growth on the modernisation and development of tractor lines. We have realised that our chances to enter into the international markets ahead of the competition are closely related to the improvement of the quality of our products and the competitiveness of our prices. Global markets are flooded with goods from India and China. The quality of our products is high enough

to take on these competitors, especially due to the fact that we are always ready to adapt them to specific customer ideas and n requirements,” concluded Mr Tsaryk. Visit: www.bztda.com

Industry Europe 23

TYRES FOR

EXTREME

Nokian Tyres is a global leader in the development and manufacture of heavy-duty tyres for extreme environments. Philip Yorke talked to Jarkko Puikkonen, the company’s global marketing director, about its latest developments for tyres for the mining and forestry sectors and its move into new markets.

CONDITIONS

okian Tyres was founded in 1988 and was first listed on the Helsinki stock exchange in 1995. However, the company’s roots date back to 1898 when Suomen Gummitehdas Oy, or the Finnish Rubber Factory, was established. Passenger tyre production commenced in 1932 and the company’s first winter tyre was produced in 1934. Nokian’s best known tyre brand, the Nokian Hakkapeliitta, was launched in 1936 and remains a brand leader in its field today. The company’s key products are studded and non-studded winter tyres and high-speed summer tyres and these two

24 Industry Europe

examples represent Nokian Tyres’ fastest growing product segments. Today the company’s most important brands include the Nokian Hakkapeliitta, the Nokian Kaaka and the Nokian Nordman. In 2012 winter tyres represented over 74 per cent of all Nokian car tyres sales. However, another strong growth market contender is its range of special heavy-duty tyres for the agriculture, forestry, construction and mining sectors. This Nokian Tyre division is responsible for more than 10 per cent of the company’s global sales. In 2012, Nokian Tyres employed over 4000 people worldwide and recorded sales of more than €1.6 billion.

Pioneers in challenging environments Since its earliest days Nokian has been committed to pioneering the development of tyres for harsh conditions, and today it leads the world in this high-tech area. Uncompromising testing and constant product improvements have earned the company a reputation for superior safety and control in arctic weather conditions. The main objective of Nokian Tyres’ R&D programme is to reinforce the company’s status as the manufacturer of the world’s best winter and forestry tyres. Development is based upon the principle of sustainable safety, which translates as ensuring

that the safety properties of a tyre should remain intact, even as the tyre wears. Mr Puikkonen said, “Our Heavy Duty Tyres Division now incorporates truck tyres and this has boosted our turnover from €100 million to more than €150 million. However, our main market sectors remain those of Forestry, Agriculture, Mining, and Tunnelling as well as Material Handling and Earth Moving. We are the global market leader in these sectors and our clients represent some of the biggest OEMs in the world including Komatsu, AGCO, John Deere and New Holland. We work in close partnership with our customers to develop tyres that meet the extreme challenges that they encounter. For example, this could be forestry tyres that are subjected to rocky terrain and arctic snow conditions or tyres for underground mining environments where huge loads that exceed 1000 kg are placed upon the tyres. “We are planning to roll out a range of new products at the forthcoming Swedish trade fair and our latest Forestry S2 tyres will be on display there, along with others that are currently in the pipeline. Our export markets are also growing well, especially in Russia where we have an important manufacturing facility and are already well established in the region. However, all our heavy duty tyres are still produced in Finland. “For our heavy duty tyres we only use the highest quality natural rubber as synthetic alternatives do not offer the same resistance to extreme weather conditions and at the moment they do not provide other important qualities that are vital in operations in extreme environments. We are also seeing consistent growth in our harbour business area where we provide tyres for gantry cranes and material handling equipment. These tyres must be extremely resilient as they are subjected to long hours of duty and operate in very rough, salty conditions. Our focus remains on the premium end of the market where we provide unparalleled customer service and products which are unmatched in terms of both quality and reliability.”

areas about the size of the palm of your hand. The role of tyres in managing the safety of a car is focused on fast-changing conditions. These can vary from roads that are wet, to those covered in snow before turning to ice. Therefore the tyre tread and tyre pressures become vital to the optimal functionality of the tyres. The extreme climatic conditions in the Nordic regions demand much more from tyres than in more temperate countries. The tyres must maintain their grip on the road surface whatever the conditions. For these reasons, much of the R&D that goes into the development of Nokian’s Heavy duty tyres is focused upon the issue of safety and reliability in hostile environments. Different market areas require their own customised products and the creation of safe, successful products requires detailed familiarisation with new developments in automotive technology, as well as close cooperation with machine and equipment manufacturers. n For further details of Nokian Tyres’ innovative products and services visit: www.nokiantyres.com

Putting safety and performance first Tyres represent the most active piece of safety equipment in a car or truck. The control of the vehicle relies on four contact

Industry Europe 25

TRACTORS THAT MAKE SENSE Well-established Polish tractor manufacturer Farmtrac has a unique offer that it is now bringing to the international agricultural market. Emma-Jane Batey spoke to the CEO, Andrzej Kublik, to learn how this is being achieved.

26 Industry Europe

ractor manufacturer Farmtrac Tractors has been firmly established on the Polish market for more than 13 years. With all its operations and manufacturing currently located in Poland, the company is in the process of bringing its respected tractors to a wider audience. As the largest manufacturer of tractors in Poland, Farmtrac Tractors has long been able to draw on a considerable experience to ensure that it is delivering exactly the type of tractors its customers want. It is this clear understanding of the real market demand, and the subsequent manufacture of tractors that perfectly fit the bill, that has characterised the company’s rapid and successful growth.

Real customer understanding Farmtrac Tractor CEO Andrzej Kublik is clear that meeting customers’ specific needs is crucial to the company’s increased global

footprint. He said, “We are famous for our R&D. Our decision to boost our presence on the international agricultural vehicles market has been driven by our passion for R&D and our desire to share our tractors with a wider customer base. As a company that truly offers something different, we are excited about the future.” That ‘something different’ is Farmtrac Tractors’ easy-to-use, affordable-to-buy range of tractors. Mr Kublik explained how the vast majority of tractor manufacturers are continually looking to increase the features and technical capabilities of their vehicles, whereas Farmtrac sets itself apart by focusing on making its tractors simple but effective. Mr Kublik said, “We are proud to offer simple tractors made by experts. Farmtrac’s promise is a full agricultural tractor with easy-to-understand electronics. We don’t over-engineer our tractors, or make tractors that are too difficult to maintain

and repair. Farmtrac Tractors is consistently focused on tractors that are affordable and effective and perfectly suited to small- and mid-sized farmers’ needs.” The two key market areas where Farmtrac Tractors are positioned are for the one tractor needed by small- to mid-sized farmers and as an auxiliary tractor for big farmers. A third market area where Mr Kublik is working to promote Farmtrac’s products is as a viable alternative to buying a used tractor. He explained, “Our tractors are certainly price competitive when it comes to the used tractor market. We aim to highlight to potential customers that they can buy a brand new Farmtrac tractor for the same price as a used tractor – we know that this is appealing as it means that they can get a simple-to-use yet proven quality tractor that is brand new, rather than buying a second hand tractor that may have features that they won’t even need or use.”

Industry Europe 27

WAŚ is Poland’s manufacturer of lamps and reflecting devices for cars, trucks, buses, tractors, trailers, semi-trailers and agricultural machinery. Our products have been exported to 48 countries. We focus on the quality of our lamps and operate in accordance with the European approval of E20. Our LED lamps meet the UNECE electromagnetic compatibility regulations and are marked with the IP66/IP68 top class tightness. The lamps’ components are made from high-quality plastic material, resistant to mechanical damages and climatic conditions. We keep introducing new products to the market. Many of them have been submitted to the Patent Office. Our offer includes more than 800 types of lamps. Each lamp is designed by us and produced in our plant. tel.: +48 71 313 95 18 e-mail: office@was.eu

www.was.eu

SPAREX IS AN INTERNATIONAL PROVIDER OF HIGH QUALITY SPARE PARTS FOR AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY.

DRABPOL DRABPOL is a company with marketing, servicing and designing profiles. It has been operating on the Polish market for more than 30 years. It provides passive security solutions for the road, air and sea means of transport. It is a representative of many global companies and brand, such as Continental VDO, Honeywell, Universal, L- 3 Communications Wescam, Garmin, MSI, Mix Telematics, AADI, Konvekta.

SPAREX We have established a cooperation with Farmtrac in 2000. We are very pleased with the cooperation, which has worked very successfully and satisfactorily. We always care about the quality of our parts and about

It offers the innovative system solutions in the field of design and production, realized for the manufacturers of buses, special vehicles and boats. Drabpol offers modern KIBES on-board electronics management system, boards indicators, vehicle/machines fleet management systems, solutions for active tracking of vehicles, trailers, containers, wagons; multifunction systems that facilitate the work of drivers and fleet management, air conditioners for the driver workplace.

regular supplying, which distinguishes us from other suppliers. Our employees are happy to advise and assist our partners in the selection of optimal solutions for new products.

The company provides sales, installation, service, technical support, after sales care and training. Acting as the VAR (Value Added Reseller) company, Drabpol in addition to selling products is also helpful in their technical and technological implementation.

Current cooperation allows us to consider Farmtrac as a partner, which takes us and our commercial services appropriately. With a clear conscience we can recommend this company and its products.

Drabpol is a reliable business partner in the global market, as evidenced by the company’s Code of Ethics and the international certificate of TRACE. For more information about the company, see: www.drabpol.pl

Mr Kublik continued, “The very fact that our tractors are simple is what sets us apart. We want to avoid unnecessary features that could potentially cause technical problems. Our view is that if we’re choosing features for our tractors and the choice is between technical and mechanical, we’ll always choose mechanical as it means that people can easily fix a Farmtrac tractor. Some technology is a must, of course, and our customers will happily tell you that our tractors are as technical as they need, but the truth is we go for simple and reliable.” The next big development for Farmtrac Tractors is to bring this message of ‘simple tractors made by experts’ to new mar-

30 Industry Europe

kets. Already an important leading player in Poland, Farmtrac has, in recent years, developed a presence in Turkey and Germany as well as 16 other European countries. The plan is for Farmtrac to carefully recruit distributors and partners to enable it to grow across Europe, particularly western Europe, with a clear aim to target both the budget and mainstream agricultural vehicle segments.

Ready to grow Mr Kublik continued, “We already have the capabilities to succeed – the technology, the manpower and the intelligence. But what we need is the network of agents to suitably

represent our brand. We are not looking to compete with the huge brands with multiple subsidiaries – that would not be the best thing for Farmtrac or our products – but we do want to compete with the used tractor market and to show small- to mid-sized farmers how great our simple tractors are!” The company recently attended the Agritechnica trade exhibition in Hanover. Mr Kublik concludes, “We know our strengths. We know who will benefit from our tractors – now we need to find out where they are and how to reach them. It is a very exciting time for us as we have a fantastic product range and we are looking for the right strategic n partners to help us grow.”

MORE THAN JUST A MOTORCYCLE Ducati Motor Holding SpA is not a company like others. Instead of clients, it has fans to whom it doesn’t simply offer motorcycles, accessories and apparel, but a way of life. Barbara Rossi looks at the company and its recent developments.

he passion generated by Ducati is such that it has in the region of 200 official fan clubs around the world, called DOC – Desmo Owners Club – named after the desmodromic valve control technology which differentiates the Ducati motorcycles from those of its competitors. Alongside these, there are at least an equal number of unofficial fan clubs and, as if this was not enough, Ducati has actually set up a museum (the Ducati Museum), in its Borgo Panigale headquarters (Bologna). The museum recounts the history of the company, of its models and of the personalities who have contributed to its success. A book and a DVD, giving a virtual tour of the

museum, have been produced and Ducati regularly organises events for its followers, such as Ducati Dream Tours, organised weekends of motorcycling whose participants come from various countries but all share a passion for Ducati. The company website is visited by over 12 million fans each year and contains a space in which fans can share their enthusiasm through stories, pictures and videos, especially with regard to the Monster model, whose 20th anniversary is being celebrated this year. Monster is the most successful motorcycle produced by Ducati from a commercial point of view, as is proven by the 250,000 models sold since it was first launched.

Company history Ducati was established in Bologna in 1926 as a family company, initially producing radios and then moving to the production of motorcycles after the war. Its first model, the Cucciolo (Puppy), was manufactured in 1946. The company is also extremely successful in motorcycle racing, for which purpose it actually set up a dedicated company, Ducati Corse (Ducati Racing) in 1999. A strong growth phase commenced in the late 1990s, when the company owned by Cagiva was taken over by the Texas Pacific Group. By the end of the same decade Ducati became a listed company, present on both the New York and the Milan stock exchanges. Industry Europe 31

Since the takeover, Ducati transformed from a purely manufacturing company to an almost ‘entertainment organisation’ and increasingly launched new, sophisticated models. In fact, 2006 saw the launch of Desmosedici RR, a true replica of Ducati’s MotoGP machine, while the Hypermotard arrived on the market in 2007. It should also be pointed out that in the 1990s, as well as having launched the Monster, Ducati also produced the 916, one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever built, while the turn of the century brought the launch of MH900e, the first motorcycle to be sold exclusively on the

Internet. April 2012 saw a major milestone for Ducati when it was acquired by Audi AG from its previous owner Investindustrial Group. Ducati competes in the World Superbike Championship with a factory-supported team and the World MotoGP Championship with both an official and a factory-supported team. In Superbike, Ducati has won 17 manufacturers’ titles and 14 riders’ titles and in 2011 passed the historic milestone of 300 race victories. In 2013 Ducati will compete in the World Superbike Championship with Team Ducati Alstare field riders, Carlos Checa (Spain) and Ayrton Badovini

(Italy). Ducati has participated in MotoGP since 2003, and won both the manufacturers’ and riders’ titles in 2007. For 2013, the official factory Ducati Team will compete in the Desmosedici GP13 with Nicky Hayden (US) and Andrea Dovizioso (Italy), while the factory-supported Pramac Racing Team’s line-up is Ben Spies (US) and Andrea Iannone (Italy).

2013 range Today the Ducati range is composed of a series of category-specific model families: Diavel, Hypermotard, Monster, Multistrada,

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Fornitore Ufficiale 2013

Streetfighter and Superbike with associated apparel and accessory lines. The new Diavel is available in different versions: Diavel, Diavel Dark, Diavel Carbon, Diavel Strada and Diavel Cromo. It is also available in three riding modes, namely Urban, Touring and Sport. The new Diavel, in particular the new Diavel Strada, has widened its range of use, transforming from a ‘muscle bike’ to being an excellent player on winding roads and a reliable partner for medium haul trips. A new generation of Hypermotard was also launched on the market in November 2012, still based on the features which made this bike unique and successful – namely design, innovation, sheer fun, advanced technology and exclusive engineering solutions. Hypermotard is available in three versions: Hypermotard, Hypermotard SP and Hyperstrada – the last being a perfect cross over between the world of Motard and that of the touring bike. The Hypermotard series is characterised by a new, water-cooled, 4-valve 821cc engine. It offers simplified maintenance as, thanks to constant

investments in design, state-of-the-art components and the attention Ducati has dedicated to even the tiniest detail, maintenance intervals can be extended even further. This range is also available in three riding modes, specifically designed for each model. As this year is the 20th anniversary of the launch of the original Monster model, a unique model, the original version combined with the latest generation performance, has recently been introduced. The new Multistrada 1200, on the other hand, offers Skyhook suspension, a stunningly smooth Testastretta 11˚DS engine, plus the usual Ducati appeal. The series includes four models, one of which is the Multistrada 1200 S Touring, described as being ‘born to travel’. The new Ducati range for 2013 also includes the Streetfighter, which comes in two models, the new Streetfighter 848 and the latest Streetfighter S. With a fighter attitude and a naked sophistication, Streetfighter truly offers all the elements which have made the Ducati superbikes legendary.

The Superbike series also comprises several models, among which there is the 1199 Panigale R, which having been born out of the world of competitive racing and offering technological excellence, as well as an unbelievable performance, can be truly defined as the flagship of the superbike family. Every year, Ducati collects many awards from around the world for its innovative and stylish motorcycles. These are fitting accolades for what the company proudly refers to as ‘hand-built motorcycles of authentic n Italian performance’.

Industry Europe 35

PERFECTION IN YOUR HANDS Wollsdorf is the world’s leading manufacturer of the finest quality leather for car steering wheels. Peter Mercer finds out what exactly makes the company special.

March 2013 Wollsdorf Leather, the global market leader in full-grain leather for car steering wheels, took another decisive step forward with the opening of its own development centre for parts and sewn seat covers. The new centre is equipped with the latest technology and has enabled the company to provide a full service in terms of surface leather as well as embossed, stitched and printed leather parts. “In addition to our fully integrated tannery and the punching department at our Weiz facility this new development centre is the next logical step in moving even closer to the customer,” said Wollsdorf CEO Andreas Kindermann. “This expansion will further open up some highly qualified job opportunities and underline our claim to market leadership.” Wollsdorf is one of the leading leather producers in Europe. From its production sites in Wollsdorf and Weiz, in the East Styria region of Austria, it produces the finest quality products for the global automotive, furniture, aircraft, marine and garment industries. Its core business is in producing premium leather for car steering wheels, an

application which is the most demanding of all the uses of leather in car interiors. In fact the company is the world’s leading manufacturer of steering wheel leather; over 60 per cent of its entire production is dedicated to this application and it has about 60 per cent of the premium European market, supplying top range marques such as Audi, BMW Jaguar Landrover and Mercedes Volkswagen Volvo. Wollsdorf also has a plant in China which produces steering wheel leather sets for the rapidly growing Chinese auto industry as well as leather covers for aircraft seats.

Something special Wollsdorf has been developing top-class quality products for the automotive industry for decades and now approximately 20,000 cars are sold each day upholstered in the company’s leather. It attributes its success in maintaining such a leading position to a unique combination of passion, technology, flexibility and innovation. In fact, says Andreas Kindermann, the company has recently been taking a close look at what exactly it is that makes it

special. “Fundamentally it comes down to how well we utilise our resources,” he says, “and that includes the raw materials that we process, the craftsmanship and expertise of our staff and our care for the environment, which is, after all, another resource. We think that we do something special in all three of these areas. “To start with, we are very careful in our selection of hides, which are all sourced from Limousin bulls in southern Germany and northern Italy. To produce the finest quality hides these cattle have to be bred and fed correctly, they have to be kept very clean to avoid skin diseases and they have to be kept in the right conditions – within cattle-friendly fences, for example, to avoid tears and abrasions. Then, in every stage of the production process, we operate rigorous inspection and sorting procedures so that we can remove imperfect hides and end up with a product that has an above average content of full-grain leather.” Mr Kindermann explains that leather producers often hide scars, insect bites and so on by embossing or working the surface

BASF As the world’s leading chemical company, BASF has established itself in the leather industry for more than 100 years. Our key customers, such as Wollsdorf Leder, have worked with us for decades and many have seen us as a sustainable, reliable and innovative partner. Working continuously on product and process development, we help our customers produce leather in a sustainable way which enable them to meet the stringent requirements set by the OEMs, brands and consumers. With a complete product range, from beamhouse to finishing, supported with strong technical expertise, a large integrated chemical production and the newly global automotive setup in Germany, BASF is well positioned to lead this industry.

structure to hide these defects. This is a perfectly acceptable practice but for its premium steering wheel leather Wollsdorf uses as much full-grain leather as possible.

Looking after people, looking after nature Wollsdorf also puts a lot of work into the education and welfare of its employees. It identifies strongly with the East Styria region of Austria but its workforce is multinational. There are people from more than 40 nations, from all over Europe and from the Americas, Africa and Asia, working under its factory roof, says Mr Kindermann. More than 500 work at the headquarters in Wollsdorf itself, producing leather for cars, aircraft interiors and furniture upholstery, and another 300 at nearby Weiz, where they cut leather for around 120,000 steering wheels per week and for another 100,000 small parts such as instrument panel finishes and air-bag covers. The plant in China currently employs about 50 people engaged in cut-

ting and sewing steering wheel leather and leather for aircraft seats. “We are committed to providing our staff with the maximum opportunities for training and advancement,” says Andreas Kindermann. “We have set up the Wollsdorf Academy and implemented a training policy that starts with the shop floor workers and goes on up through shift leaders and department managers. We want everyone, even if they have no high-school education, to realise that they can move up through the company. Our health and safety schemes have reduced accidents by 50 per cent in the last two years and we have regular health checks for all our employees. We have a profit share scheme and a company newsletter and I myself meet with everyone we employ in small groups each quarter to make sure they are all fully informed about the company’s progress.” Wollsdorf is equally imaginative in developing programmes to protect the environment. In the last two years it has reduced its

use of water in hide processing by 30 per cent and continues to improve the efficiency of its waste water treatment plant. This year the company has also introduced a plant that will convert animal fat into biodiesel. “We have to deal with around 10,000 tonnes of fat a year, and up to now we have just had to dispose of it as waste,” explains Mr Kindermann, “but we can now extract from this total some 1000 tonnes of clean fat which our new plant can convert into a quantity of biodiesel equivalent to half our own annual thermal energy requirements, although, in fact, we don’t use the fuel ourselves.”

Lightening the load But Wollsdorf is also helping the environment through the development of its own products. It has recently introduced a unique ‘lightweight’ leather specifically for aircraft seats. Developed together with its long-term partner Schauenburg for seats that are made by Recaro, this new product offers weight savings of some 40 per cent over traditional

Bauce presents the revolutionary new machine for pressing the wet blue skins with 5 pressing cylinder model BLUESTAR VERSUS. New pressing system of Wet Blue belly to belly, ideal for full thickness leathers and splitting in lime leathers. Designed and patented on the basis of careful research in particulars and on 45 years of experience in the tanning industry, this machine has been designed keeping in mind during the design phase of the following characteristics dictated by the most modern and advanced tanning industry: • • • • •

Sturdiness and reliability Drying power Pressying system with double calender Quick maintenance Easy to use

New system with double blade cylinders to work the leathers in: • belly to belly mode, butt to neck mode and belly to belly mode for leathers with hump PATENTED MACHINE OUR COMPANY IS CERTIFIED:

Centralpelli S.r.l is an exporting company of raw hides and wet blue skins. The company is a family operated business dealing with hides from Northern industrialised meatworks. This trade has been carried through three generations of family, dealing with knowledge to its clients. There is no middle man, you deal directly with the company. Centralpelli S.r.l processes hides from various weight ranges on a monthly bases approximately 20.000/25.000 pieces categories. The company processing plant is a large exporter to all areas of Europe and Asia. Part of the company’s production is converting raw salted hides into wet blue tanning, capable of supplying wet blue full stage hides on a continuous monthly basis. Our monitoring process incorporates hand salting, grading and packaging operations in the Tuscany region of Italy. We deal with Northern-Italian hides as they have a high calibre in quality combined with excellent grain selection. We ensure customer satisfaction, placing Centralpelli S.r.l as one of the best in the industry to deal with. Our method of conservation is firstly by de-fleshing, trimming and then salting the hides. The hides are then categorised and sorted into weight and grade category. Our hides are carefully and methodically selected and individually divided per piece. Centralpelli S.r.l is concerned with quality, security in dealings and customer satisfaction. That is why first rate product is guaranteed on time, every time. Any further enquiries, please do not hesitate to contact Mr. Rosario Stellitano, Managing Director for Centralpelli S.r.l.

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BAUCE TRI.MA s.r.l. Via del Lavoro, 27 - 36070 TRISSINO (VI) TEL. 0445-490740 - FAX 0445-490068 Codice Fiscale / Partita IVA 02171330240 Registro Imprese Vicenza n. 25649 R.E.A. VI n. 211871 - Mecc. n. VI 010962 http://www.bauce.com - e-mail: info-line@bauce.com

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E-mail: rosario.stellitano@gmail.com Skype: rosario7322

aircraft leather and is manufactured using an environmentally-friendly tanning process that does not require the use of chromium. Lufthansa is scheduled to receive more than 32,000 aircraft seats equipped with this new ‘Styrian’ leather and Austrian Airlines are taking 4,600 units. Compared to the seats currently in use, the conversion will reduce the total weight of all the aircraft in the programme – more than 200 – by some 60 tonnes. “The airline industry is very enthusiastic about our new lightweight leather,”says Mr Kindermann, “which is not surprising since a weight saving of around 3 kg per seat means big fuel savings in a 200 seat plane. And, of course, if the engines use less fuel they also emit less CO2. A further gain is

that the lightweight construction of the new seats increases the capacity per aircraft by, on average, one row of seats. That means that Lufthansa, for example, can offer 2000 additional seats. To do that with conventional seats they would have to buy 12 more Airbus A320 planes.” Wollsdorf’s commitment to the highest quality secures its leading position in the market for premium leather for steering wheels but it also sees great opportunities for growth beyond the premium sector. “We supply standard leather for OEMs such as Ford and GM, particularly in North America, and although we have a smaller market share in this sector it is a very large market and we see plenty of opportunities

for expansionthere,” says Andreas Kindermann. “We are also entering the market for split leather – leather that is made from the inner layers of the hide – which is often used for steering wheels on popular smaller cars from VW, Opel, Fiat, PSA etc. This is a fastgrowing market right across the world and, especially, of course, in China. “In China and across Asia the airline industry is also growing at a remarkable rate, with record numbers of new aircraft being ordered every year. So we see excellent prospects for our aircraft seat leather business around the world and our plant in China is ready to serve both the automotive and the aviation industries there as they continue their spectacular expansion.” n

ENERGYEFFICIENT BUILDING The German construction company Huf Haus builds luxurious prefabricated homes. It has become wellknown for its innovative architecture with a unique symbiosis of glass and wood. Marco Siebel spoke to the sales and marketing director, Michael Baumann, about the company’s environmentally sound building techniques and its expansion outside Europe.

44 Industry Europe

1912 the German carpenter Johann Huf opened his shop in Hartenfels between Cologne and Frankfurt am Main. His grandson Georg Huf today runs the company that builds the highly recognisable sustainable timber Huf Houses all over the world. Huf Haus has 18 offices and one production site, from which some 470 employees have completed more than 10,000 building projects. Huf Haus started out as a sawmill and became renowned for its quality throughout the region, following which it started developing pre-manufactured timber structures and turnkey buildings. In 1958, Huf Haus became internationally known for its assembly of the pavilions for Germany and Saudi Arabia at the Brussels World Exhibition. Today, Huf houses can be found anywhere on the planet, from the UK to China,

from Paris to St Petersburg. To better cater for customers’ needs, the company founded the auxiliary companies dealing with gardens and landscape architecture (GartenART), rendering and painting (MalerART), and the bespoke furniture company StilART.

A hidden champion Huf Haus has been listed as a ‘hidden champion’ by Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hermann Simon, a German author and businessman that leads a team of experts in strategy, marketing and pricing. The team has authored numerous books and articles on hidden champions – companies that are often family-owned, relatively small in size, highly successful on both national and international markets, yet unknown to the wider public. Hidden champions are ranked top in the world and normally work in small niche

markets. For these markets they design unique products, which are produced with a high real net output ratio. One result of working with unique products in small niche markets is quite often the need to deal on the global market. Hidden champions also operate extremely close to their customers, and their customers’ needs are an important driver for their innovations. Their high real net output ratio is often achieved by working using proprietary processes which make it hard for competitors to imitate their products. It also seems to be evident that to maintain market leadership hidden champions do business on their own. Even sales in countries abroad are often organised from the parent company base. The corporate culture of hidden champions is distinctive. Their values are conservative: hard work, strict selection, intolerance Industry Europe 45

of underperformance, low sickness rates and high employee loyalty – and most are based in smaller towns.

the necessary energy-efficiency features at no additional cost. Customers can even opt for a plus energy Huf house.”

Quality and tailor-made mass production

Harmony between architecture and energy efficiency

Although the components of a Huf house emerge from a state-of-the-art production line, they are assembled to create an individually architectured house, with every part being manufactured to the highest quality standards. The production process is not driven by quantity but by the semi-automated prefabrication and pre-assembly of the components that results in a quality standard that could never be achieved through manual, predominately on-site, assembly. Michael Baumann continues: “Every Huf house is as recognisable as a Porsche 911. Obviously, the underlying building technologies continuously change and adapt to new requirements and customers’ demands. Huf Haus was awarded the ‘Excellence in Solar Energy’ earned in 2001, and we launched our green [r]evolution Huf house Generation with a building management systems from REDBLUE ENERGY in 2009. Huf houses are built to the highest environmental standards, and our green [r]evolution houses are equipped with all 46 Industry Europe

For some, individuality in systems is a contradiction, but Huf Haus has impressively proved the contrary with its modum line, launched in 2013. It has a flexible room programme with an intelligent modular design system, and thanks to the green [r]evolution construction design the houses convey a near perfect harmony between dream architecture and energy efficiency. The innovative and evolving Huf Haus timbered architecture provides a solid foundation for this new type of house without compromising the quality of materials or construction. The level of technology in each build is determined by the owners themselves; however, the standard equipment installed surpasses the quality and design standards to begin with. Michael Baumann: “The individual needs and requirements of the client are essential when designing a house. We do not use predefined layouts, only sample designs for

inspiration. The modular system of 1.20m x 1.20m allows for enormous flexibility in the basic dimensions of the house. This results in the perfect adaptation to each individual plot – even a smaller house can be configured so as to incorporate a large family.”

Sustainability as a matter of principle Huf Haus chooses materials and energysaving production methods that are ecologically and environmentally viable. That is why

in 2009 the company invested in a modern biomass power plant, which is fuelled solely by waste from the production line. The plant is fitted with an efficient exhaust filter, in advance of any legislative requirements, and saves a total of almost 500 tonnes of CO2 per year – an important contribution to the protection of the environment and climate, and maintaining the excellent air quality of the Westerwald forest near the company’s production site.

Michael Baumann concludes: “In 2011 Huf Haus invested in a second computerised numerical control machine in order to work wood even more efficiently. The machine – which is 18m long and 6m wide – has been delivered by Hundegger, the global market leader for CNC machines. The high quality as well as the precision make a considerable contribution to the economy and the competitiveness of the company.” n

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Industry Europe 47

THE GEOTECHNICAL

SPECIALISTS

Multinational Terratest is a leading engineering operation in drilling, excavation and soil treatment. Abigail Saltmarsh reports.

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ith a global reach and projects currently active in more than 30 countries, multinational group Terratest can justly claim expertise in a number of different areas of infrastructure. Guido Pellegrino, director of the group’s International Department, explains that the organisation, which is headquartered in Madrid, has a reputation in a wide range of areas of construction. “We are one of the leading construction, tunnelling and general engineering companies in the world,” he says. “We are known for our work in a number of different areas but one of the most recent trends we are focusing on as a group is water. “With water as a scarce resource in many places, such as the Middle East, for example, the infrastructure related to it – and required for it – is becoming increasingly important.”

Global growth The Terratest group as a whole has its origins in a Spanish company, Craelius Diabor SA, which was founded back in 1959, as a subsidiary of the Swedish company, Sveska Diamantberborrin AB. At that time its activities were mainly dedicated to perforation and the production of drilling components. In the 1980s, further companies such as Icos and Cimyson were incorporated into the group. Today, it is a multinational entity with branches in most European countries as well as in North Africa, Latin America and the UAE. Over the years, the group has expanded to focus on a number of different areas. These include pile driving (both displacement piles and replacement piles) and core walls - reinforced concrete or plastic walls, for structural and waterproofing applications. Its Small Diameter business division focuses on foundations that combine

traditional micropile, anchor bracing and grouting techniques with more modern systems, such as jet and super jet grouting or compaction, balance and consolidation grouting. In the auscultation sector, Terratest also provides its services at all levels.

Working with water In environmental activities, it aims to offer solutions to a wide range of problems, such as bio-remedies, soil decontamination and water table control. The group also focuses on aquifer decontamination and control, erosion control, the design and construction of waste disposal sites, leachate control and decontamination and river bed channelling. “We work on the detection of pollution in water and the development of infrastructure for water,” Mr Pellegrino explains. “At the moment we are working on some desalination plants in different parts of the world. Industry Europe 49

“This has become a real niche area for us. It is a specialist area that we are able to offer our expertise in, as well as in the areas of general engineering.” He adds: “With water as one of the scarcest resources on the planet – and often a cause of political tension – I think this will be a growing area for us. In the same way as we have done with oil and gas, we are applying our techniques to this very important area.”

50 Industry Europe

Major projects Among Terratest’s more prominent projects have been a bridge crossing the river Danube between Romania and Bulgaria, the metro systems in Rome and Madrid, and the airports in Madrid and Hong Kong. The piles at the airport in Hong Kong, which have a depth of 100m and have gained Terratest an entry in the Guiness Book of Records, are also the result of their engineering skills.

“We are working on a number of important projects at the moment, including one in Colombia. We try to follow general macroeconomic trends and to focus on areas of international growth. At the moment these are really Central and South America, as well as parts of the Middle East,” says Mr Pellegrino. “Europe also still has interesting opportunities for us – as does the former Soviet Republic.” He continues: “What we try to do is to work with local parties. When we set up in

a new country, we spend a lot of time and resources detecting just the right companies there to work with. It is very important to us to have local knowledge.”

A strong future Terratest is largely looking for organic growth, he explains. Its aim is to continue to push out into new markets and to stay one step ahead of the competition. “We try to specialise as much as possible in our core techniques; the areas where we have the knowledge and expertise to deliver and to differentiate us from the competition,” he says. “But at the same time, we are trying to expand these, which is why we are moving further into areas such as water. “With the globalisation trends we see at the moment, we believe we are in a strong position. We can continue to expand, while developing new relationships with partners in other countries and with strategic suppliers, n all of which will have mutual benefits.”

Industry Europe 51

52 Industry Europe

ADDING HIGH PERFORMANCE TO LOW VOLTAGE MOTORS UMEB is a market leader in the design and manufacture of low voltage, high performance electric motors. As one of Romania’s leading industrial companies it has ensured its future through a programme of consistent investment in new technology and improvement. Five years ago the company served just three key customers in Romania, today it has more than 60 major customers worldwide. Philip Yorke reports.

his year (2013) UMEB is celebrating 65 years of success in the field of electric motors. The company was founded in Bucharest, Romania in 1948 and began as a state-owned manufacturer of electric motors. In 1990 it was privatised when the US investment fund New Century Holdings acquired it and began to modernise its production lines. Further investments were made in 2005 when it invested over €10.5 million in a new headquarters building and fully automated production facilities. However, one of the most important events in the company’s recent history was its entry into the European Union, which allowed it greater access to European and global markets. Today UMEB is marketing its high-performance electric motors throughout the EU as well as to many new customers in the Middle East and beyond. This dramatic increase in sales is also due in part to its commitment

to raising its overall productivity levels and to achieving European certifications for both its management and production processes.

Lean manufacturing processes In order to compete with its European rivals, UMEB set about designing and constructing a purpose built, state-of-the-art facility, and this became fully operational in 2008. The new building was designed from scratch as a green field site and all necessary funding was made available by its owners: New Century Holdings (NCH). As a result of the investment in new technology, the company has been able to significantly reduce its production costs, which in turn has enabled it to increase its manufacturing capacity and competitiveness. The company’s state-of-the-art plant is located on the outskirts of Bucharest in a modern industrial park and it has the ability to produce a wide range of high-perfor-

mance electric motors and generating sets. Gheorghe Chitu, the company’s general manager told Industry Europe, “One year ago we began to implement our lean manufacturing processes for our electric motors and generating sets. This has already produced visible and tangible results, such as reducing our delivery times from 45 days to less than 30 days. Furthermore, we have succeeded in reducing our own material stocks and have been able to increase our levels of customer satisfaction, as well as improving our own profitability.” Mr Chitu added, “At the same time, our implementation of these lean manufacturing processes has enabled us to increase our overall capacity as well as the modification of our purchasing and sales operations. Generally speaking, the technologies that we have developed are in accordance with the needs of our customers and we plan to continue to Industry Europe 53

invest in the latest CNC machines and new technologies as they present themselves. “To underscore this commitment, in 2014 we are investing more than €0.5 million in new technology, as we believe that by ensuring the continuous improvement of our organisation and production processes we can maintain strong growth and profitability.”

Specialised applications UMEB’s core business lies in its ability to meet strict criteria for highly specialised applications. The most important of these concern the company’s explosion-proof electric motors, which currently represent around 75 per cent of its turnover. These highly specialised electric motors can range from 0.09kW to 315kW, and in sizes from 63mm to 355mm. In addition they are fully certified in accordance with ISEMEX quality

54 Industry Europe

assurance and the ATEX Directive 94/9/EC. These robust units are suitable for use in environments where explosive gases such as acetylene, hydrogen and ethylene are present. The company’s product range covers virtually all types of explosive environmental applications, including those involving explosion-proof enclosures and non-sparking motors. UMEB also offers a wide variety of motor options, which can be adapted to suit every type of specific need in the petrochemical, oil and gas industries. Furthermore, the company produces a wide range of special ‘standard’ motors which offer high-performance in combination with an extremely long life span. The company’s slogan: “Performance through quality” sums up its commitment to quality and reliability, and is endorsed by its growing reputation as a ‘best-in-class’ European manufacturer.

UMEB’s flexible approach to the design and production of highly specialised, niche market electric motors would not be possible without its extensive R&D capabilities. The company’s team of highly skilled scientists and electrical engineers is currently working to ensure its conformity with the new IE3 European standards, which come into force in 2015. New product development is one of the company’s priorities and this year it will increase its range of electric motors, especially those in the large 400 series. This is due to the fact that the company’s big electric motors offer greater added value and there is far less competition in this area. When it comes to research, UMEB also works in close cooperation with Bucharest University as well as with the R&D departments of its customers. The company also works in partnership with its suppliers, many of which

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Increasing global reach During the next few years the company’s goal is to increase its range of explosion-proof electric motors and to build upon its customer base in the Arabian, African and Asian countries. This is in addition to extending its appeal to markets in other parts of the world.

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Mr Chitu commented, “We are confident in our future because, through our continuous efforts to improve quality and productivity, we have cemented our cooperation with leading companies in both offshore and onshore oil and gas industries. Furthermore, we are committed to expanding our partnerships with customers and suppliers in both our n existing and emerging markets.” For further information about UMEB’s specialised electric motors and services visit: www.umeb.ro Industry Europe 55

56 Industry Europe

STRENGTH UNDER

PRESSURE

The economic situation in Europe may be difficult, and particularly so in Italy, but a sizeable number of highly specialised niche firms are doing well. ATV SpA is a shining example of this, having increased its turnover by 30 per cent over the last year. Barbara Rossi spoke to the company’s CEO, Luciano Sanguineti.

TV SpA was set up by a group of sector specialists, including Mr Sanguineti, who had years of relevant experience. The aim was that of supplying niche valves for the offshore subsea industry (to be employed at great ocean depths). The company started with just four people, but has now grown to a staff of 250. “We invest a lot, so as to achieve a high level of product quality and safety. Our products are used at such subsea depths that maintenance cannot be carried out, as it would be incredibly expensive. These valves are built to last for the whole life of an oilfield, which varies from twenty to forty years. Our valves offer the very best which can be achieved with current knowledge and technology. Obviously we are constantly striving to further improve our offer,” Mr Sanguineti explained. ATV SpA is based in Colico, 100km north of Milan, on the eastern shore of Lake Como.

Despite its small size Colico has become home to an offshore subsea valve specialist district, with five companies specialised in this field being located there. Mr Sanguineti initiated this trend in 1979 when he created the first Colico based firm with this specialism – Ring o valve – subsequently bought by Cameron, the American corporation. The range of products offered by the company is not limited to offshore subsea valves, but also includes valves for platforms, refineries, pipelines and gas treatment (both for upstream and downstream). In addition to this, the company is able to supply valves for conventional and nuclear power plants. However, at the moment the offshore, and particularly the subsea, sector is the core business of the organisation, generating over 99 per cent of turnover. “After 2008 and 2009, notoriously difficult years, the oil and gas offshore sector has really

taken off, especially in terms of subsea installations. The fact that we are able to supply certified high-quality valves for this industry has been the engine of our growth. Our valves are supplied to companies building subsea installations, and they are installed on safety systems. After the accident which took place in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the US Government has requested the oil companies to provide an emergency equipment to prevent subsea oil spillage. ATV has supplied the high pressure gate valves installed on the first capping stack designed and built by Trendsetter Engineering in Houston, TX. This equipment, blessed by the US authorities, has become the model preferred worldwide by the oil companies (one dozen already built and delivered, all with ATV high pressure valves). The valves are now also being purchased by other major oil companies, or their system integrators, and are installed in a variety of locations, including off-

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shore installations in the North Sea, south-east Asia, western and southern Africa, Brazil and Australia. They are in high demand, as they are necessary for the safety systems which, after the Gulf of Mexico accident, are required to be located very close to the actual drilling facilities. In fact, 99.9 per cent of our turnover is generated from export.”

Unique testing facility As mentioned ATV’s valves are used at subsea depths of up to 3000 metres and, in order to test them under the actual pressure and temperature existing at 4500 metres under the sea, ATV has developed and constructed its own hyperbaric chamber, the most advanced of its sector. This is the only hyperbaric chamber of large dimensions – it weighs 200 tonnes when empty – working at a pressure of 450 atmospheres. Similar facilities exist in other countries, but for lower pressures only. The company’s hyperbaric chamber is used by third parties for the testing of their own products, which although related to the subsea industry, are not valves. When working with his previous company Mr Sanguineti also collaborated with universities and he pointed out how this chamber has the additional potential to be employed for the development of defence sector products. The growth experienced in recent years – in the last 12 months almost one hundred people have been taken on, mainly young

staff – is expected to continue. Having the right kind of products is at the basis of this success. “We do not carry out research as such, which is something best done by universities and research institutes, whose collaboration we sometimes seek for the resolution of issues, but we continuously carry out product development, often involving the resolution of issues concerning other areas, such as welding or metallurgy. Often the stimulus for this comes from the market. If a client wants to develop its work in a high temperature or high pressure environment, we have to develop suitable safety valves for it. Our products comply with international standards, but then they have to be adapted to clients’ needs, as each project is unique. We always accept a challenge and invest up to 4 per cent of turnover in innovation This percentage varies from year to year, but for instance we invested a lot in the difficult years (2008–2009) so as to be ready for better times. We are currently working on products which clients will need in 12 to 18 months. Sometimes clients contribute financially to product development.” Production takes place at the company’s sole site in Colico, for which three latest generation machines have recently been acquired. One of these was installed at the end of July 2013, one at the end of October whilst the last is due to be installed around next March–April. This substantial investment

has been carried out to make this production unit even more efficient. This site includes an outstanding welding department. All production phases, from welding and assembly to mechanical processing and testing, are carried out in-house, as they are critical in terms of quality of final products. Demand from the offshore subsea sector is expected to continue. As well as continuing to operate in all the geographical markets currently served, the company has started being active in China. Important development in the near future is expected in the Middle East – thanks to oil fields in the Red Sea – and in the Arctic region. Future growth is expected to take place through organic expansion and the set target is that of achieving a €100 million turnover within five years. “This is our plan, as long as no major macroeconomic events disrupt the global picture. Who, at the beginning of 2008, predicted what happened later that same year? “We have excellent partners, in term of suppliers, who can offer us very high quality. We work with companies of the calibre of Valforge, Foc Ciscato, Lucchini and Praxair. Whenever possible we favour forging for subsea products, rather than casting. Italy, where 99 per cent of our suppliers are based, is particularly strong in this field, offering high quality. We employ casting for only 10 per cent of products, as forging can offer us higher safety and n quality levels.”

POWERING AHEAD In just 25 years Riello Elettronica SpA has developed a wide range of energy products. Its expertise in UPS (uninterruptible power supplies) has attracted hundreds of prestigious clients and established it as a market leader at the global level. Barbara Rossi speaks to Mr Buscherini, the marketing director of Riello UPS. Master HP Series

60 Industry Europe

iello Elettronica SpA operates in the energy market, as well as in the automation and security device sector. For the latter it produces automatic gates and alarms, as well as home automation devices, among other products, through brands such as CEMU, Cardin and AVS. Riello Elettronica SpA operates in the energy market through two brands: Riello UPS and Aros Solar Technology. As is obvious from the name, the former is focused on uninterruptible power supplies while the latter manufactures solar technology inverters. The energy sector accounts for about 75 per cent of Riello Elettronica SpA’s turnover, and approximately 90 per cent of the energy turnover is generated by the Riello UPS brand. Thanks to the progress made in the 25 years since its establishment, today Riello

UPS ranks as number one in Italy, number three in Europe and is in fourth position at the global level (according to IMS research institute). The company offers a wide choice of UPSs ranging from 400VA to 6.4MVA, thus offering a complete portfolio of solutions. The wide range of markets served include the financial, IT, telecommunications, retail, hotel, transportation, public and health industries, as well as the sport and leisure, military, industrial, energy, government and education sectors. Mr Buscherini explains, “Two products which stand out in our offer are the Multi Sentry and the Master HP. They have both been on the market for a few years and offer an exceptional performance in terms of efficiency and reliability. We produce thousands of these products each year and they are

used by clients all over the world. The Multi Sentry is a transformerless state-of-the-art uninterruptible power supply with a TUV certified high efficiency level -exceeding 96 per cent – a world record. “The Master HP series also features very high efficiency (exceeding 95 per cent). It has an insulating exit transformer, with ensuing high levels of reliability and sturdiness. It is an extremely compact and versatile product with transformer, which has been chosen by ENI (one of the largest integrated energy companies in the world) to be used in their brand-new green data centre (ENI Green Data Centre) under construction in the Pavia area, which will be the largest in Europe and whose target will be that of having a PUE (power user effectiveness) lower than 1.2”

New products are continuously being developed, as innovation is one of the missions of the company. “We have many new projects in the pipeline: just two examples, we are currently developing a new transformer-less series of over 120kVA and a high concentration modular UPS for the data centre sector.” The company is responsible for its products from the design right through to the commercialisation phase, including their development and production. All research and development is conducted internally, and both sites, based in the Verona (Legnago) and Milan (Cormano) areas, are equipped with R&D laboratories, as well as being engaged in production. A very high share of turnover is channelled into research and innovation.

Truly made in Italy Mr Buscherini adds, “We offer a truly ‘Made in Italy’ range, as all our products over 3kVA are produced in the country. Each of our two sites has a specialism, with Cormano developing and producing high-power UPSs usually with transformer – and Legnago developing and manufacturing transformerless and lower power UPSs. The two sites also produce the solar inverters for the Aros Solar Technology brand. This is very important, because increasingly we find ourselves supplying integrated solutions, combining UPS and solar inverters.” In its quest for further expansion the company is opening a site in India, where it has set up a joint venture, of which it currently holds the majority share and of which it will soon take total control, for the purpose of

developing production for the local market, thus avoiding hefty custom duties. The aim of this operation is not therefore that of delocalising European production. “We have been investing and expanding for years, opening sites and carrying out acquisitions. First we have developed in Europe, and we have been present in China for years. Currently we are expanding in Asia and we have recently set up our Indian site, which, unlike the others, is not

only active in terms of commercial and technical assistance, but also at the production level. We also have a branch in Australia. Our sights are now set on Singapore, where we want to set up a branch (we currently have a rep office there) while our longer term target is the USA. “Geographically the world is our market. With a share of 20–30 per cent of our turnover, Italy is still our main market, with the rest of Europe ranking in second posi-

tion, followed by Asia, the former Soviet Union countries, Australia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa, while our focus for future expansion will be North America. I would say that our future growth will take place through a mix of organic expansion and acquisitions, depending on the circumstances of the individual markets. As well as expanding through geographical growth, we plan to increase our share in markets such as the data centre

sector, which will expand in future years and where we aim to increase our presence and become a main player.” Mr Buscherini also mentioned some of the awards held by the company, as well as other activities in which it is involved, “We have recently won two Frost & Sullivan prizes. In 2012 we were awarded the 2011 prize for “Strategy on the International Markets” and this year we have received the 2012 “Company of the Year” award for our UPS brand. In terms of company initiatives, we are involved in the restoration of the Palladian Villas in the Vicenza area, as well as in sponsoring the theatre in Legnago, so we have a strong link with the area in which we are based and where we started our business. For the last seven years we have also been a sponsor of the Ducati Corse MotoGP team. We do this because we feel close to Ducati, as geographically they are in the Bologna area, not very far from us here, as well as sharing lots of similarities as companies, in terms of n structure, history and philosophy.”

DAIRY EXPERT Lacpol Group, with headquarters in Warsaw, is one of Poland’s leading industrial groups; its main business is the production and sale of dairy products to markets around the world.

acpol has been active on the dairy market for more than 25 years. “Initially Lacpol was a trading company with exports of dairy products as its main activity”, says Mr Kazimierz Los, the Lacpol Group president of the board. “The company saw a dynamic development in 1990 when we purchased many dairy producers in Poland. Thus, we turned from a typical trading company into a production and trading group of companies.” Nowadays the group consists of nine manufacturing facilities and services, a cold store, two wholesalers of dairy products, two hotels in Krynica Zdroj and a certified laboratory. Manufacturing facilities are 64 Industry Europe

located throughout Poland. Lacpol is also the publisher of “Przeglad Mleczarski” (“Review of the Dairy”) a journal focused on the issues of the dairy industry, which has been published for more than a hundred years. Each of the Lacpol facilities specialises in the production of a particular segment of dairy products. This form of activity allows the group to apply and use specialised production technologies, as well as those considered traditional. Thanks to the extensive collaboration with global food corporations, as well as with renowned research institutions, Lacpol products are well known throughout the world. “Exports account for 60–65 per cent of

our total sales. Countries from the European Union region are our main foreign markets; however, our products are also well-known in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China and North Africa. Sales of our dairy products to the EU countries and to countries outside the EU are carried out directly by Lacpol in Warsaw, while domestic distribution of products is carried out directly by the individual production plants and Lacpol Gdynia,” explains Mr Los. Total annual sales of the group are estimated as more than PLN 800 million (more than €200 million). “The first half of 2013 was very profitable for the Lacpol Group. Our sales went up by 20 per cent compared

to the first half of 2012. There are two main reasons behind this increase in demand: dry weather in New Zealand, the country which is the biggest dairy products exporter, and revival of demand for dairy products in China and North Africa. There is also another positive trend: butter is back in consumers’ favour,” explains Mr Los.

Fresh and dry dairy products The Lacpol Group’s offer includes a full range of fresh and dry dairy products. The latter market segment is the company’s export flagship. Dry products are obtained by the complete evaporation of water from the fresh

foodstuff. Lowering the water content to just a few per cent gives powdered products a much longer life. They can be used by virtually every branch of the food industry, both as one of many components or as a central feature of the product. Dry products, such as powdered milk, are especially valued in such regions as North Africa where the climatic conditions adversely affect the quality and shelf life of fresh products. The group’s production capacity and the broad experience of its plants that manufacture powdered products, allow full modification of the composition of the final product, which is the milk powder intended for further

processing. Milk and its derivatives can be enriched by minerals, vitamins and any components depending on the destination and the customer’s requirement. Fresh cow’s milk is the base for all the products. It is subject to various forms of processing and heat treatment. Microbial vaccines used by Lacpol are tested in terms of quality by in-house research laboratories. Microbiological material used in the manufacture of products comes only from strains that have not been genetically engineered. Raw milk used by Lacpol comes directly from selected farmers. In the process of manufacturing, the group cooperates with reputable

Industry Europe 65

SPX SPX manufactures a complete range of Anhydro brand dryers and evaporators for the dairy, food, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries, including: spray dryers, spin flash dryers, fluid beds, evaporators, and small scale plants. Focusing on flexibility and attention to individual customer needs, SPX enables excellence at every point along the value chain as part of our commitment to our customers’ success. Look to SPX and its industry leading brands to provide continued equipment dependability, support and process expertise.

66 Industry Europe

companies. For example it works with Christian Hansen, a company that develops natural ingredient solutions for the food, pharmaceutical, nutritional and agricultural industries, in developing solutions for the immunisation of cows. It also works with Ecolab, a global provider of water purification solutions, disinfectants, cleaning products, energy technologies and services to the food, energy, healthcare, industrial and hospitality markets.

Permanent development Although the Lacpol Group’s situation is very stable, the company is not resting on its laurels. Permanent development is a part of the company’s philosophy. “We have been constantly investing in further development. Our annual investments are estimated as PLN 20–30 million (€5–6 million). Recently a new cheese plant was built in our facility in Piotrkow Kujawski.

It is one of the biggest and most modern facilities of this kind in Poland. A new line for cheese maturing was also installed in our other dairy, located in Zalesie. This plant can be described as ‘one big cheese maturing facility’. Each dairy that belongs to the Lacpol Group is updated on a regular basis,” assures Mr Los. n Visit: www.lacpol.com.pl

Industry Europe 67

CLEAR VISION FOR GROWTH Trakya Cam Sanayii is a global leader in the development of flat glass for a diverse range of industrial applications. Philip Yorke looks at the company’s on-going investments in floatglass technology, as well as its ‘fast growth’ strategic vision as it embarks upon new jointventures and moves into the expanding Indian marketplace. 68 Industry Europe

rakya Cam was founded in Turkey in 1978 by the Sisecam Group and operates three major production facilities in the country. Headquartered in Istanbul, it was the first company in the region to pioneer the use of ‘float-glass’ technology which it adopted in the early 1980s. Since then the company has continued to see consistent growth and to invest heavily in research and eco-friendly manufacturing processes. Today the company ranks fourth in Europe and sixth globally in the float glass business. It currently produces a variety of high quality products for use in the automotive, solar-energy, architectural and home appliances sectors.

Trakya Cam’s parent company, the Sisecam Group, is an international concern founded in Turkey in 1961 and today operates seven float-glass production facilities and ranks among the top glass suppliers in the world. Most of the group’s products are non-standard and designed to meet the specific needs of a diverse portfolio of clients. In 2009 Trakya Cam took the strategic decision to enter into a joint venture with Saint-Gobain, one of the world’s largest glass manufacturers, in order to develop its interests in Egypt and Russia. Since then, the two world-class manufacturing

companies have joined forces regularly to make major investments in the field of flat glass and automotive glass products.

New investment initiatives Trakya Cam has also extended its influence in the Balkan region in line with its vision of multi-focus production capabilities, and in 2006 inaugurated the very first float-glass production line in Bulgaria. Trakya Glass Bulgaria is a wholly owned subsidiary of Trakya Cam and specialises in the development and manufacture of tempered and mirrored glass products. Trakya Cam’s growth in its domestic market has also been enhanced thanks to its wholly-owned Turkish subsidiary, Trakya Yenisehir Cam Sanayii. This affiliated company operates state-of-the art float-

glass and coated glass production lines, as well as a high-tech laminated-glass plant. Thanks to its clear vision and proven ‘fast growth’ strategy, Trakya Cam Sanayii AS continues to expand its capabilities and today employs over 2800 people. In 2011 the company recorded sales of more than €751 million.

Joint-venture increases potential in Russian Federation Towards the end of 2011, Trakya Cam and Saint Gobain Sekurit signed a joint-venture agreement for a major automotive glass investment programme in the Russian Federation that will begin full-scale production early in 2013. This will cover the production and sale of automotive glass in the region and will be conducted in the Alabuga Spe-

cial Economic Zone. This modern plant is designed to be capable of producing more than 800,000 ‘glass car sets’ per year for items such as windshields and sidelight and backlight glass panels. The CEO of Sisecam Flat Glass and Trakya Cam, Chairman Teioman Yenigun, said that car production in Russia is expected to reach approximately three million per annum by the year 2015. He added that the joint venture investment will enable the supply of highquality automotive glass and other services required to meet the growing demands of the rapidly expanding Russian automotive industry. Benoit d’Iribarne, the CEO of Saint-Gobain Sekurit commented, “This investment will enable Saint-Gobain Sekurit, one of the world’s leading automotive glass players, to support the business growth of its custom-

Industry Europe 69

euroTECH euroTECH offers individual solutions in the field of vacuum technol-

Our products for the wood-working industry include vacuum lifting

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the solar and standard glass sectors. Our glass lifting devices are

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components are reduced. The product range was expanded in 2010 with the launch of a euroTECH is an innovative and customer oriented company with

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customised requirements. Through close collaboration with the customer as well as by remaining service-oriented, we want to ensure long-lasting customer satisfaction.

ers by strengthening its existing manufacturing network.” Trakya Cam and Saint-Gobain had earlier signed a separate joint-venture agreement for the manufacture of high quality flat glass, mirror and coated glass in the same special economic zone in Russia. Today, Trakya Cam retains a 70 per cent share in the latest jointventure, with Saint-Gobain holding a 30 per cent interest in the business.

Global reach extending to Asian markets In keeping with its strategy to target developing countries that offer highgrowth potential, Trakya Cam is entering the Indian market. Prof. Dr Ahmet Kirman, Vice Chairman of the board and CEO of Sisecam said, “As Trakya Cam, we aim at penetrating into new geographies within the framework of our ‘fast growth’ vision. In line with this target, we have decided to enter the Indian float glass market.”

Subsequently the company has signed a ‘Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with one of India’s largest glass packaging producers; HNGIL (Hindustan National Glass & Industries Limited. This company is one of India’s largest glass producers and the intention is to jointly own and operate their float glass business in India. Under this new agreement, Trakya Cam will hold a 44 per cent share in HNGFL, which currently operates one float glass line, with 12 per cent of the new venture being held by the IFC (International Finance Corporation. IFC is also a minority shareholder in HNGFL. Kirman added, “Following the completion of the joint venture process, evaluation studies on new growth projects regarding additional float glass and automotive glass investments in India will n be initiated.” For further details of Trakya Cam’s products and services visit, www.trakyacam.com.tr

Industry Europe 71

AIMING FOR THE BEST The Croatian company Lipik Glas d.o.o. has secured its reputation by delivering high-quality glass for the some of the world’s top companies in the automotive, rail and shipbuilding sectors. Vanja Švačko talks to the sales manager, Andrej Marin, to find out what changes have happened at the company since it was last featured in Industry Europe two years ago.

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ipik Glas is Croatia’s largest glass manufacturer, its continued success the result of a long tradition that goes back to the early 19th century. It is also able to take advantage of being a part of the Italian Finind Group, one of the world leaders in the glass industry. The company serves a number of industry sectors in which high-quality glass is required. The main types of glass manufactured by the company are thermally tempered and laminated.

An adventure that has paid off Lipik Glas started its international journey in the automotive industry and that sector remains one of its most lucrative markets. “We are an export-oriented company,” says Mr Marin, “with almost 99 per cent of production ending up abroad. The automotive industry is becoming intensively global and if we consider the increase in the car business and competition in the glass sector, it is obvious that we have to maintain diversity and quality in our product portfolio in order to stay competitive.” Lipik Glas got its first big international opportunity in 2003 when Bentley Motors Ltd contracted it to provide glass for its new car

model. This major contract win opened doors for partnerships with well-known international car manufacturers such as Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini, Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin, Lotus and Pininfarina. Apart from standard automotive glasses such as windscreens, side and rear windows, partitions and sun roofs, the company also offers specialist grades of glass with acoustic and thermal insulation, bullet resistance and so on. In the railway sector Lipik Glas collaborates with some of the leading manufacturers of railway vehicles (such as the Italian AnsalodBreda, British Bombardier Transportation and so on), specialising in offering not only specifically tailored glasses, but also glasses built into the aluminium frames, ready for final assembly. The company also manufactures glass for ships and yachts and for the construction sector (for facades, barriers etc). It boasts high-quality glass for staircases, featured for example in Apple stores across the globe.

Market presence Lipik Glas intends to increase revenue and production volumes by developing new projects. As mentioned above, almost 99 per

cent of its production is for abroad, mainly the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany. “At this point we are not present in the domestic market because the automotive and railway industries are not developed in Croatia,” says Mr Marin. “As for new geographical markets, we do not choose them randomly, but instead markets are choosing us. If a manufacturer in the USA wants our products, we are ready to deliver fast and efficiently to the automotive and rail sectors.” Since Lipik Glas has always been strongly present in the major European markets, Croatia’s recent incorporation into the EU has simplified logistics somewhat. This means that the company is now an even more attractive prospect to potential customers thanks to faster delivery options.

Shift in production policy In the coming years, Lipik Glas is expecting to increase its production of safety glass, for which it already holds all the necessary certificates. This production policy shift was adopted after an extensive and overwhelming flood of cheap Chinese products experienced by the European glass industry in the past few years.

Despite the fact that Lipik Glas has an enviable list of reputable customers, it took a while to recover from the economic crisis. Although once a pioneer in the production of solar cast glass, as a result of these new import dynamics Lipik Glas had to stop manufacturing it. “The next market we intend to win,” explains Mr Marin, “in terms of capitalising on our well-established production experience, is the market for bullet-resistant glass for vehicles (cash-in-transit vehicles and similar). So far it has been under-represented in our various production programmes. Since we are a part of one of the world’s largest manufacturers of bullet resistant glass (Finind Group),

it does not come as a surprise that we have plans to develop in this segment. The majority of our current investments are aimed at rebuilding manufacturing plants, buying new equipment and investing in a line that could produce bullet-resistant glass for vehicles.” The major advantage of Lipik’s bulletproof glass is its combination of glass and polycarbonate, which gives it additional safety. The company is the only Croatian manufacturer of this kind of glass.

Prospective plans

Lipik Glas is delivering products for the new Rolls Royce models through their suppliers. These models require the highest quality of glass, but are produced in smaller series. Lipik Glas is also attempting to work with automotive companies that manufacture models in larger series. “We would like to offer our glass for cars such as Porsche or Jaguar,” explains Mr Marin. “This is a chance for us to test how competitive we can be with companies that produce up to 50,000 vehicles annually. We hope we can n live up to that challenge.”

Apart from the direct partnerships with wellknown partners in the automotive industry,

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GLOBAL REFRIGERATION SPECIALIST The EPTA Group is a renowned global leader in the commercial refrigeration market. Despite the challenging economic climate it has been growing continuously in the past few years. Industry Europe looks at the company’s recent global expansion and dedication to innovation.

Industry Europe 75

PTA Group is the European market leader in commercial refrigeration and a widely respected global partner for food retailers, with its five main product areas of cold rooms, refrigerated packs, special cold cases, mainstream cases and their installation and maintenance. Offering five wellestablished commercial refrigeration brands, EPTA appreciates its position as the partner of choice for retailers looking for turnkey solutions. Its brand portfolio, including Costan, Bonnet Névé, BKT, George Barker and Euro’Cryor, has allowed it to continue to grow throughout the global recession. Active worldwide, EPTA is currently strongest in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Its extended portfolio still has potential for growth in both emerging markets and traditional markets where

76 Industry Europe

commercial refrigeration for the food sector has either room to grow or would welcome increased competition.

Acquisitions and partnerships During these challenging economic times the company has focused on gaining market share domestically, throughout Europe and even farther afield. Its strategy is to acquire companies within the commercial refrigeration sector to support its long-term aims. For example this year (2013) the company expanded in South America after announcing the acquisition of Portanuova SA’s commercial refrigeration division – a distributor of leading-brand products in Chile, Peru and Ecuador, with a turnover of around €11 million in 2012. This transaction has led to the establishment of Epta Pacifico Sur SA.

In addition to acquisitions, Epta has continued to focus on gaining market share in its traditional European market. One means through which it has been able to achieve this is the establishment of strategic partnerships. For example, in February 2013 it announced a strategic union with IARP – an Italian leader in the production and marketing of plug-in units. With this move, the Epta and IARP groups have created one single group whose size and production capacity, at international level, can meet any market challenges. The new group is expected to have annual revenues of around €650 million, with 12 plants in Europe, Asia and South America. Another reason for Epta’s consistently strong performance in a difficult economy is the fact that it serves the entire food industry.

This means that whether people are buying luxury goods or buying cheaper goods in bulk, retailers will always need commercial refrigeration units to stock the food.

Improving product offering Epta has always been dedicated to the commercial refrigeration sector and to proving itself a reliable partner for its clients’ long-term needs. To maintain its reputation in the global markets that it serves it is dedicated to improving all aspects of its offer. In addition to its product range, this means improved customer services and increased flexibility. Sustainability is always a very important focus for the company as well – something which is fundamental to each new product and technological innovation. For example, in August this year the company introduced its revolutionary new remote monitoring service. Thanks to the constant monitoring of parameters, this allows clients to guarantee cold chain consistency in stores and ensure reduced energy consumption. This

78 Industry Europe

service utilises the expertise of a team that is capable of decoding alarms and troubleshooting problems in real time, so that systems can be serviced quickly and effectively. This service can reduce energy consumption by an impressive 20 per cent. Alongside environmental concerns, Epta’s R&D team also concerns itself with the allimportant issue of food safety. To this end, in July last year it began offering its new antibacterial treatment for traditional units using silver ions. With this solution, the materials inside the unit are treated during the extrusion and coating processes, while internal parts are coated with a special paint that exploits the properties of silver ions. The active principle of silver is one of the oldest antiseptics in

use as it is able to block bacteria development. Developments in nanotechnology have allowed companies such as Epta to apply this principle far more effectively.

Poised for further growth

meeting customers’ needs, acquiring new companies that will boost its presence in the commercial refrigeration sector while enabling it to gain new market share in countries outside n its traditional European heartland.

One of the biggest events to affect the retail industry in recent years has been the French government’s announcement that all food retailers will have to display cold food such as meat and cheese behind glass doors by 2020, rather than the open chilled cabinets that are currently used. With EPTA able to supply these units, it is keen to highlight its capabilities in meeting this new regulation. EPTA expects to continue to grow in the coming years, owing to its dedication to

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SETTING A COURSE FOR THE MIDSTREAM

Golar LNG is one of the world’s largest independent owners and operators of LNG carriers. Abigail Saltmarsh reports on the business.

80 Industry Europe

ith decades of experience, Golar LNG is in a strong position at the forefront of the LNG shipping industry, explains the managing director of Golar Wilhelmsen Management and chief operating officer in Golar LNG, Oistein Dahl. The company developed the world’s first floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) projects, based on the conversion of existing LNG carriers, and today has four FSRU projects “Our strategy is to grow our fleet on a profitable basis and build upon our industry leading position as a ‘midstream’

solutions provider,” he explains. “We will do this via operational excellence, customer relationships and our experience. “We are an experienced and professional provider of LNG shipping that places value on operating to the highest industry standards of safety, reliability and environmental performance and our success is directly linked to the service and value we deliver to our customers. Our customers and partners include some of the biggest participants in the LNG industry.” He adds: “We are now progressing plans to grow our business further upstream via

floating liquefaction (FLNG). Our strategic objective is to become an integrated midstream player in the LNG industry.”

Entering shipping Golar LNG was formed on May 10, 2001 from its predecessor, Osprey Maritime. Today it focuses on the acquisition, ownership, operation and chartering of LNG carriers and FSRUs through its subsidiaries. The business was originally founded in 1946 as Gotaas-Larsen Shipping Corporation. Gotaas-Larsen entered the LNG

FMC Technologies, Inc. FMC Technologies, Inc. is a leading global provider of technology solutions for the energy industry. The Sens, France Loading Systems business unit has been awarded with a contract of 3 DCMA-S (Double Counterweight Marine Loading Arms), 16’’ x 60’ for Liquefied Natural Gas service to be installed onboard the GOLAR Eskimo FSRU. The FSRU will be moored alongside a fixed jetty. The outboard loading arms will be used to transfer LNG from shuttle carrier temporary moored alongside the FSRU in a ship to ship configuration.

shipping business in 1970, when it ordered the LNG Carrier Hilli, which is still part of the fleet today. “Gotaas-Larsen was acquired by Osprey Maritime Limited in 1997 and then in May 2001, World Shipholding Ltd, a company indirectly controlled by trusts established by John Fredriksen for the benefit of his immediate family, our chairman and president, completed an acquisition of Osprey – acquiring the LNG shipping interest of Osprey,” says Mr Dahl. “World Shipholding remains our largest shareholder.”

Additional growth opportunities Golar’s FLNG strategy focuses on the development of low capital cost, rapid deployment floating facilities, utilising the conversion of high-quality existing LNG carriers, floating technologies for the liquefaction of pipeline quality gas or associated gas (requiring minimal processing) and other innovative LNG solutions. “This strategy complements our industry leadership position in floating LNG regasification facilities development,” he says. “In an era of intense competition in the LNG industry and

Part of the key certified and FMC patented components of the LNG arms, are the hydraulic 16” Chiksan® couplers and the double ball valves ERS (Emergency Release System) full bore, to bring enough operability to the system and assure weekly LNG transfers in safe conditions. The long-term relationship and partnership between FMC Technologies and GOLAR - SHI is set and reinforced by this new project. In 2008, 3 marine loading arms, type DCMA-S 16” x 60’ have already been ordered to FMC Technologies, and were installed in the GOLAR Freeze FSRU.

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Established in Oslo in 1991, MARINETRANS is a specialised company dealing exclusively with marine spare parts forwarding and logistics. Together with ship owners and managers, MARINETRANS has developed a unique system that saves clients time and money. We have expanded and opened offices in strategic places around the world, to be where our clients are trading. With our 24 free of charges warehouses all over the world, we take care of your spares from your supplier and all the way to your Ship. • Qualified and solution orientated personnel. • Up to date on all regulations all over the world at all time. • Handpicked agents keeps us informed of changes in their local country. • Each client - One contact. • Communication - Integration towards your platform.

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the high cost and long lead time of land-based LNG facilities, we believe our highly costefficient approaches, based on floating LNG liquefaction, storage and off-take, shipping and regasification facilities of the types now being developed by the company, will be key to substantial additional growth opportunities.”

Midstream floating solutions Since 2001, Golar has grown from a fleet of six LNG Carriers purely focused on LNG transportation, to a fleet dedicated to both LNG transportation and midstream floating solutions. Its strategy to become a midstream floating solution provider began in 2002 when it undertook a study with Saipem/Moss

Maritime to consider the conversion of an existing LNG Carrier into a Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) and in 2004 a similar study for the conversion into a Floating Power Generation Plant (FPGP). “In April, 2007, Golar was awarded its first firm FSRU commitments via the award of two long-term leases by Petrobras to employ Golar Winter and Golar Spirit as FSRUs.”

New vessels Today, Golar’s fleet consists of 13 vessels. Four of these vessels are dedicated to midstream floating solutions projects; the remaining nine vessels are currently under dedicated time charter or available for spot

employment or conversion. Lately Golar has also been awarded two new FSRU contracts in respective Kuwait and Jordan. A shipbuilding project to add new vessels to the fleet is currently underway. “We have now received the first LNG Carrier. The newbuilding programme consist of totally 13 vessels of which 10 are carriers and 3 are FSRUs. Scheduled for delivery between now and January 2015, all 13 160,000 to 170,000 cbm membrane type new-builds will feature the latest energy-efficient tri-fuel (gas/diesel/ fuel oil) engines, a 0.1 per cent boil off rate and 19.5 knot design speed,” says Mr Dahl. “These new-build carriers will be available n to meet a range of charter terms.”

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A STRONG POSITION ALTA a.s. is one of the major Czech engineering producers, specialising in supplying technical equipment for the engineering and mining industries, the construction materials sector, metalworking and energy. In addition to central and eastern Europe it operates mainly in the Commonwealth of Independent States but recently has started to establish a position in new markets.

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LTA was founded in 1991 as a limited liability company. The breakthrough years were 1994, when it was converted into a joint-stock company, and 1999, when it merged with its subsidiary ALTA – Turbo a.s. Since its establishment ALTA has focused on business in the countries of central and eastern Europe. In the first few years trading was dominated by classical import-export operations supplemented by counter-trading. Today’s trading activities include a full range of trading, financial and engineering services to secure a high level of competitiveness for the company.

Dynamic Growth Over the last decade the ALTA group has grown significantly. Its delivery options were significantly strengthened by the 2005 acquisition of TOS KUŘIM – OS. To this in 2008 was added a major production and design base in mining technology in the form of SE-MI Technology. In 2010 ALTA purchased the ČKD BLANSKO-OS factory for the manufacture of heavy carousels. A

further major acquisition by ALTA occurred in 2011 when it purchased the ŠKODA MACHINE TOOL producer of heavy machine tools. Then 2012 saw the signature of the joint foundation with the Russian Tvel company of a new company ALVEL, specialising in nuclear energy, followed by the acquisition of DMS s.r.o. ALTA also owns subsidiaries in the Russian Federation and in the Ukraine. In the last few years the activities of ALTA have demonstrated an increasingly global character. Its reach has grown to further countries and states, at present especially in India and China. The dynamic growth of ALTA is also documented by its repeated placement in the top one hundred most important companies in the Czech Republic in the chart compiled annually by the CZECH TOP 100 association. Since 2000 ALTA has placed in increasingly higher positions in the chart. In 2012 ALTA took 63rd place in the hundred most successful Czech companies. It also placed consistently in the top five most successful companies in the Czech Republic’s southern Moravia region.

Number one in central Europe ALTA supplies machine tools and technical equipment for the engineering and metalworking industries, the energy sector, the mining industry and the construction materials sector. It has available the design and implementation capacity of its subsidiaries, the trading skills gathered in ALTA a.s., support functions in the shape of ALTA CZ a.s. and stable management through its parent company ALTA Invest a.s. In addition to its trading activities ALTA increasingly fulfils the role of general contractor for investment projects including the introduction of new production technologies as well as the reconstruction and modernisation of existing production capacity. Together with supplies of equipment it provides customers with broad-based engineering support for the introduction of new production techniques. ALTA’s export activities are today focused on supplying investment projects, machine tools, equipment for the mining and processing of ores and stone, construction material manufacturing equipment and on trading other engineering products. Its import activiIndustry Europe 91

Leifeld Metal Spinning AG Feldstraße 2-20 59229 Ahlen Germany Tel.: +49-2382-96607-0 Fax: +49-2382-96607-212

www.leifeldms.de

Leifeld would like to congratulate company ALTA on their continuous success. We are proud to be one of your strategic partners and look forward to working with you on new projects in future.

ties are based mainly on metalworking and the energy sector, in which ALTA achieves significant volumes, particularly in its already traditional supplies of iron ore pellets, metalworking materials and fuel elements. In its field ALTA is one of the largest companies in central and eastern Europe.

Latest projects There are many examples of successful projects from this important Czech company. Worthy of note are the important contract

for the construction of a turnkey factory for construction materials in Russia, and the Memorandum with the Serbian Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure on cooperation in the construction of a facility with a new mine and power station rated at 380MW, valued at €650 million. That year also saw the signing of an important contract with OAO Ashinskii metallurgicheskii zavod (AMET), for the reconstruction and overall modernisation of a rolling mill. The contract valued at €330 million is due to be completed in 2013 in turnkey format.

ALTA is based on the professionalism, specialist skills and teamwork of its top specialists. Its ability to deliver complex projects while meeting the individual demands and requirements of its customers secures the company’s competitiveness, key to its activities in the global marketplace. At present this is particularly true for India, China and Israel. In the future it intends to continue to provide its customers with modern technical and technological solutions supported by essential services in design, engineering and financing. n

Industry Europe 93

GOING OFFSHORE

Set up thanks to a recent merger, but equipped with the experience and know-how of the founding companies, Remazel Engineering is active in a range of sectors, with products for the offshore industry increasingly gaining ground and set to soon become its core business, as Barbara Rossi learns from Mr Gamba, the company’s CEO.

emazel Engineering was founded in 2010, thanks to the merger of Rema Engineering and Zambetti e Lumina. Zambetti e Lumina had taken its name from that of the two partners who had founded it at the end of the 1960s, while Rema Engineering had been set up at the beginning of

the 1980s by Mr Gamba, who had spent the previous fifteen years managing other companies dedicated to producing special equipment and involved in the off-shore sector. The merger took place because Rema, which was a specialist in offshore engineering and plant subcontracting, as well as car-

rying out assembly and installation, wanted to further develop its deep water range and, in order to do this, needed the right organisation to qualify and control all the production activities, including expediting and cost control. For this reason, there was the need for a more structured organisation. Zam-

betti e Lumina was identified as being of particular interest because of its supply and production time management, as well as its quality control capabilities. Through the merger the original objective was achieved. Remazel Engineering, whose recent turnover is €90 million, is organised into three divisions: Zambetti e Lumina, Metrio and Rema. Zambetti e Lumina, with its 50 years of experience in the field, manufactures turbine components, specifically GT burners, GT combustion chambers, GT parts, boiler burners and mechanical components, making its products according to customers’ specifications. One of its notable clients is Ansaldo. Metrio designs and manufactures diverters, exhaust systems, diffusers, guillotines, silenc-

ers and expansion joints, as well as multilouvre, biplane, stack and butterfly dampers. The Metrio division works on the basis of a consolidated know-how, which is then customised to respond to clients’ needs. The main sectors to which it supplies its products are oil and gas, paper, cement, chemical, petrochemical and metallurgy. The Rema Division has developed its activity in a range of sectors (oil and gas, power transmission, railway), but its core business is machines and systems for oil and gas offshore production. It deals with all the equipment for pipe laying vessels and their anchorage, alongside those for drilling units, lifting vessels and accommodation barges, as well as with complete permanent mooring systems for FPSOs. Design and engineering

play a main role in the work of this division, as all machines and systems are fully customised. The division’s main clients are Saipem, Petrofac, SBM, Technip and Engevix/Petrobras. All facilities and offices are based in the Bergamo area of northern Italy. Although the operational activities of the different divisions remain separate, all offices have been moved to the new 2500m2 Chiuduno site, where the administrative and commercial departments have been integrated in a single team, including the electrical division and the engineering department. In October a new assembling unit for large machinery, especially for the offshore sector, will be ready, allowing engineering and assembling to be in close direct contact. “Assembling

for offshore now takes place at our Stezzano site (that will be kept as an assembly unit), while in Endine Gaiano we have two plants used by Zambetti e Lumina and Metrio, respectively dealing with onshore products and burners for gas turbines,” explains Mr Gamba. “Geographically we mainly serve European, Brazilian and Asian markets, but the balance changes very rapidly, as the market situation is very dynamic. While direct clients are based in those countries, the actual products sold are deployed all over the world. “At the moment the balance between the output of Rema’s offshore products and that of the rest of our range dealt with by Zambetti e Lumina and Metrio is about 65 per cent, but we plan to further develop the offshore side of the business in the future, as this is the area offering the greatest scope for growth. The intention would be that of making offshore into our core business.”

New foreign ventures “In terms of ways of growing, we are considering three further possibilities. The first is a possible joint venture with a company with quick access to the sea, so as to be able to assemble equipment at the sea front. We have decided to open branches in China, Brazil and Singapore, mainly for offshore Rema products. While in Singapore this will be limited to a commercial and support assistance activity, in the other two countries it will also include a production element.

Production will be for the local markets only. In both cases the products offered to these markets would be a mixture of locally manufactured products and machinery imported from Italy. As well as allowing us to comply with local political requirements, production in these countries would allow us to get round transport costs and remain competitive in terms of prices. “Similarly we are thinking of opening a branch for Metrio products in India. Again, partly producing on site is going to help us both in terms of transport cost and with regard to lead times, which when using sea shipment can reach up to four to six weeks. Sometimes being able to deliver quickly is vital, as today the market operates in a last minute context. We are already commercially present in all of the above-mentioned markets. In China we have signed an agreement with a company belonging to the COSCO group and an Italian team is ready to start up the new branch office before the end of this year.”

The company holds various certifications, namely ISO9001, ISO 14001, ISO3834-2 and OHSAS 18001. Quality is paramount, something proven by the fact that Remazel has 50 members of staff dedicated to engineering, between technicians and actual engineers, and 20 people who take care of project management, expediting and quality control. The company’s suppliers also have to abide by a strict series of checks, so as to contribute to maintaining high product quality. Suppliers have to hold certifications, as being certified according to international standards is a requirement of the offshore sector. “Virtually all of our suppliers are based in Europe, exactly for this reason, and they are one of our greatest resources. “As well as dedicating resources to engineering and quality control, we also pay a lot of attention to the training and growth of our internal staff. We aim to identify their potential n and to help them grow their skills.”

DESIGNED TO BE FASTER

WEISSER is a leading global manufacturer of multifunctional precision turning machines and turning centres – a brand that has been synonymous with cutting-edge technologies for over 150 years.

Hansjörg Weisser, Sales and Business Development Director (Far right)

EISSER machine tools with integrated technological concepts are the answer to ever-increasing demands for greater operating speed, more productivity and process reliability. Shorter cycle times and the associated lower unit costs are the decisive competitive factor especially in highvolume manufacturing. The company offers a comprehensive and versatile machine model portfolio with its UNIVERTOR and VERTOR series as well as special machines, drawing on a wealth of experience in demanding and complex manufacturing tasks. The focus is on tailor-made, process-optimised system solutions and the goal of complete machining in a single set-up. Weisser is currently among the world’s top suppliers to the major car manufacturers, their suppliers and other metalworking industry sectors. Around 430 employees work at the site in St Georgen in south Germany.

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“Our headquarters has been at this same location here in the heart of the Black Forest since 1856,” says the Sales and Business Development Director Hansjörg Weisser. “But we know that Johann Georg Weisser Senior was producing patented lathes for the local clock making industry since around 1830. For the last 20 years we have also initiated some external assembly facilities in nearby towns, and we have cooperative endassembly capacities in Brazil and the USA. In 2012 we have extended the floorspace of our production hall by 1000m2, and we are always looking at further expansion – with sustainability as our main criterion.”

Product and technological expertise “The business model has evolved,” says Mr Weisser, “but turning has always been the central point. During the last 30 years we have integrated more and more sophis-

ticated processes by means of process chain management – often we are technology leaders. “Today we can produce grinding results that would have required dedicated grinding machines years ago. We achieve this by integrating additional hardturning and a number of secondary processes – and all this in a dry environment. The advantage for the customer is a reduction of the number of machines needed, less variance, fewer interfaces and the opportunity of buying from one single source. Our patented and awardwinning ‘Rotational Turning’ goes even further, by offering a kinematics optimised hardturning process, where the grinding quality of the resulting surfaces equals those of bearing surfaces. “We also work with selected partners to cover complex process chains, such as our cooperation with KAPP for gear hobbing.

We feel that this gives us more flexibility than other companies who simply buy in the required processes.”

News in the product portfolio Things have come a long way since the 1950s, when the FRONTOR series of horizontal lathes was making a name for itself. The offer has developed into highly customised machines based on a modular system. There are vertical lathes that operate with the in-house Pick-Up-Principle, with a fixed spindle or a combination of both. But there are also horizontal spindles, and linear or swivelling axis can be added, all while maintaining accessibility and robustness. The number of new machine types has been growing continually, from vertical centre-drive lathes and twin-spindle end-finishing of shafts through to four-axis double spindles and four-spindles.

The in-house development of the unique Camless Turning enables Weisser to substitute profile trimming of non-round profiles – completely freely programmable. This is particularly attractive to use in space-saving shaft/hub connections, linear guides, tool fitting, curved elements and more. “We want to provide the optimum system for each production strategy,” says Mr Weisser. “We are called in when the customer realises that it is more important to look at the cost per piece, not at the secondary processing times or the axis speed. Building on our deep experience we can push until we find the best balance between speed and process stability. This is where our claim ‘designed to be faster’ originates – and by the way this is also valid for speed of innovation and adaption of new requirements.”

Customers in many sectors The new production hall with the 35-ton machine has pushed the maximum diameter of workpieces to 600mm, and this opens markets outside of the traditionally strong segment of OEMs and the first tiers. First inroads into agricultural and mining machines and the aviation and energy sectors have been made. All Weisser customers are well-known names, and with some there are close partnerships in the shape of Simultaneous Engineering, for example with ZF or VW. “We are present in the automotive sector worldwide. We follow the expansion of our

European customers, with export activities that offer first-class service and ensure machine availability. In South Korea, China and Russia we have direct local customers, which shows that we hold our own in foreign markets too.” “We have a large range of competent supply partners”, says Mr Weisser. “With Sandvik and Sumitomo we were able to lower the tool costs for rotational turning significantly, which brought the international breakthrough for this technology. In CNCControls we work with Siemens as well as Bosch Rexroth, which helps with the acceleration of camless turning of up to 60g.”

Individual future strategy “Next year we will be showing our camlessturning machine at the Metav in Düsseldorf. After that it is the Maktek in Istanbul, Metallobrobootka in Moscow and the AMB in Stuttgart – with displays that will surprise the audiences,” promises Mr Weisser. “We work hard on strengthening our autonomy, standing out from companies who are controlled by financial investors or who are tied into unwieldy groups. We pride ourselves on our flexibility as there is no pressure to grow in a certain way. Our own management style is suitable for the highest achievements, although in its individuality it cannot be simply applied elsewhere. However, mergers and acquisitions are part of the changing business landscape around us so we will see what surprises our newly completed handover to the sixth generation owners will bring in the future.” n

Hansjörg Weisser, Sales and Business Development Director

IN-DEPTH SUCCESS LNS is a global leader in the field of underground mining, tunnelling and offshore mining operations. Philip Yorke talked to Frode Nilsen, the company’s managing director, about its increasing involvement in harbour development and deep-sea blasting operations, as well as its expanding role in South America. 102 Industry Europe

NS (Leonhard Nilsen & Sonner AS) was founded in Norway in 1961 by Malvin Nilsen and his father, Leonhard Nilsen. Since then the company has expanded to become a major global engineering group that includes 15 highly specialised companies and is managed by the third generation of the Nilsen family. The group’s head office is located in Vesteralen, Norway, and its activities span the globe from the Arctic and eastern Europe, to South America, Asia and the South Pole. The road from a modest local company to that of a leading global operator has been a long and winding one with the LNS Group today employing more than 850 people and in 2012 recording sales of more than NOK 1.7 billion. Following consistent growth in Norway the company secured its first major contract outside its domestic market in 2004 when it won the contract for the Almannaskard tunnel in Iceland. Following this, it established LNS Chile in 2008, followed by the opening of its Hong Kong offices in 2009. Thereafter

the group evolved to become a truly global engineering concern. Today LNS offers a wide range of specialised engineering products and services that include road construction, underground mining, harbour development and deepsea blasting. In addition, the LNS Group is focused on road and tunnel construction, bulk transport and a broad range of various mining operations. The company’s many years of operations in the Antarctic has also provided it with unique expertise in the areas of polar mining and logistics operations.

Unrivalled expertise in challenging environments LNS projects vary greatly in size and scope and many of these rely heavily on the unique experience offered by the company in overcoming both practical and logistical challenges in hazardous environments. An example of a complex and challenging project awarded to LNS is the construction of Narvik’s new ore harbour, which is an enormous project by

any standards and one which provides the Swedish company LKAB with a total of twelve new underground silos in which to store large quantities of ore and pellets. “Currently we are involved in a variety of major contracts in South America, Greenland, Iceland, Hong Kong, Antarctica and Spitsbergen. In South America we are well represented and see this market as a major driver for growth in the future. Our product portfolio is also expanding and today we are seeing strong growth in a number of new sectors. As far as tunnel projects are concerned, we are expecting more activity in the next 20 years than there has been in the last 6000 years. In fact, it is clear that with the increasing pressure on large cities and conurbations to improve public transport systems, underground solutions often provide the only way forward. Mr Nilsen added, “We are also seeing strong demand in new market segments such as harbour development and underwater blasting, which like many other areas of our operations are extremely environmen-

tally sensitive and must be handled accordingly. A corollary of this is the fact that we are also restricted by the number of hours that we can work per day in these sensitive environmental situations, which means that we have to find ways to meet the agreed deadlines in less time than would normally be allocated to achieving such projects. “The latest project in Norway, is a hydropower project where we decided to use

a tunnel boring machine (TBM). TBM has not been used in Norway for more than 20 years, and with this we are bringing back the TBM knowledge to the tunnel industry in Norway. “The bottom line is that you have to find the optimal solutions and be as efficient, reliable and cost-effective as practicable. We are number one in the mining and tunnels sectors as well as being a major contender in

all our other areas of activity. This is thanks to our commitment to achieving the best possible outcomes at all times for our customers.”

Partners in progress The construction and mining industries are in a constant process of change and the demands placed on contractors such as LNS, continues to grow. In order to meet these demands it has become increasingly important to focus on a variety of forms of collaboration in order to achieve improved project coordination and faster problem identification and resolution. The objective is also to achieve stable, long-term relationships that yield better, more cost-effective outcomes. LNS has experience with many different forms of project collaboration which includes the forming of Public Private Partnerships (PPP), Joint Ventures (JV’s), strategic alliances and project collaboration with individual operators. A recent example of the benefits of working in partnership with other specialists is exemplified by the company’s joint venture with Leighton Asia Ltd, which secured a

contract worth NOK 2.1 billion for a major sewage tunnel project in Hong Kong. This extensive project is part of the Hong Kong government’s Harbour Area Treatment Scheme. The project involves planning and driving a 7.5km tunnel with five shafts, each varying from 70 to 120 metres long through a busy part of the metropolis and harbour and more than 145,000 cubic metres of concrete will be required. This is because the tunnel runs partly below the sea and partly below office buildings in Hong Kong. The tunnel excavation was finished in November this year and the tunnel lining and the lining of the shafts will go on until autumn next year. By the end of 2014 the n project will be finished. For further details of LNS’s innovative mining and tunnelling solutions visit: www.lns.no

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THE CUSTOMER CURE Full system producer and supplier Elmet is committed to putting its customers right at the heart of its activities. Emma-Jane Batey spoke to Wolfgang Leitner, head of sales and marketing, to find out more.

stablished in Austria in 1996, Elmet Elastomer Produktions und Dienstleistungs GmbH is an internationally active partner for production equipment for elastomer products and services. In recent years, the company’s identification of the myriad benefits offered in delivering a full service solution has resulted in a rapid growth, supported by its long-term dedication to innovation and flexibility. Head of sales and marketing, Wolfgang Leitner, is a passionate advocate of Elmet’s ability to deliver a full elastomer system. He told Industry Europe, “We’ve been working hard to ensure that our customers are always right at the heart of Elmet. By con-

centrating on our full system approach and by making sure that we offer what customers want, when they want it, we’re proud to have achieved our aim.”

Full system solution As a full system supplier for elastomer products today, Elmet has come from a mould-making background, furnishing the company with a valuable understanding of the issues faced by its customers. Mr Leitner explained, “For many years we’ve developed moulding equipment, dosing systems – all types of equipment have been designed and produced by Elmet. We have

a strong background know-how of the very specific issues and challenges related to the industries where our products are found, so we’ve concentrated on answering those concerns through our product development over the years.” A successful developer and manufacturer of LSR (liquid silicone rubber) dosing systems, fully automatic injection moulds, valve gate cold decks and turnkey equipment for processing silicones and rubbers, Elmet regularly creates innovative new products and launches upgrades to existing products. At the recent K 2013 exhibition, Elmet launched a new production concept for

UV-curing liquid silicone rubber. Mr Leitner continued, “Our new production concept is directed at the processing of liquid silicone rubber which cures under UV light from an LED source. There are a number of benefits to this innovative approach as it offers new possibilities in combining liquid silicone rubber with traditional thermoplastic materials. Liquid silicone rubber is a material that is not heat sensitive, not light sensitive, doesn’t lose its properties over time and offers high clearance in lenses. The new UV-curing LSR increases the number of applications even further in a

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fast-growing market, so we are very excited about the potential.” An example of an application for Elmet’s innovative UV-curing liquid is a soap dish made of translucent polypropylene which has a directly moulded-on silicone support base. Working with valued raw materials supplier Momentive and machine manufacturer Engel, Elmet created a solution which offered a complete production system that was built on a turnkey basis. With an injection mould with steel sealing surfaces on both mould halves, operating in a standard

injection moulding machine, the final silicone component is exposed to UV light for curing using rugged LED lamps.

Benefits on display With the full production system for the UVcuring LSR on display at the K show, Elmet was able to illustrate the benefits of this approach to customers and other visitors at the fair. Mr Leitner added, “Many customers want solutions; they don’t want components. Our attendance at K 2013 was the perfect opportunity for us to highlight just how com-

plete our systems are; customers can ask us the most technical questions or they can simply rest assured that Elmet can deliver the solution they need.” The full system solution offered by Elmet is characterised by the ‘fair pricing’ promise. With the company keen to guarantee that the price paid by the customer at the end of a turnkey project is the same as was agreed at the beginning, Elmet has an impressive list of satisfied clients. Mr Leitner said, “With practically everything created, developed and manufactured in-house, we are able to maintain a tight control over our costs, which we pass on to our customers wherever possible. We have excellent engineers in-house using fantastic software and equipment to realise their ideas. As a full-service supplier, our solutions are problem-free for our customers; they can trust Elmet to deliver.” The engineering skills that form a key part of Elmet’s 150-strong workforce are also likely to be a factor in the company’s expected continued success. Mr Leitner explained, “As the market for our products and services grows globally, most notably in Asia and both North and South America, we are finding that we are in a very strong position. We have the technical competence and the market opportunities to n really enjoy a very profitable future.”

LUCITE INTERNATIONAL – ‘GOING FURTHER’

Lucite International is a global leader in the design, development and manufacture of acrylic-based products. Philip Yorke talked to Phil Bailey, the General Manager of its business in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) about its latest developments and how through innovation, and working closely with customers and partners in new and existing markets, it continues to grow the world of acrylic products.

ucite International was created from the acrylic businesses of ICI and DuPont. The businesses that ultimately became ICI Acrylics had their origins in the 1930s but it began to look like the business we see today with the acquisition of DuPont’s international acrylics business in the early 1990s. Another milestone was reached in 1999 when Charterhouse Development Capital acquired the company, which has since 2001, been known as Lucite International. In 2009 the company was acquired by Mitsubishi Rayon Co. Ltd (MRC) of Japan. Today Lucite International is a global leader in the development and manufacture of acrylic-based products, with manufacturing, sales and distribution networks throughout the EMEA countries, as well as in the Americas and throughout the Asia Pacific region. Lucite

International remains the driving force behind many of the world’s best known, branded acrylic products eg Perspex®, and since it was acquired by MRC, it has further strengthened its position as the world’s largest supplier of MMA (Methyl Methacrylate), the essential building block for all acrylic products. Today Lucite International operates 22 plants at 14 manufacturing sites worldwide and employs more than 2000 people across five continents. In 2012 Lucite International recorded consolidated sales of over USD1.8billion.

Innovative technology Lucite International has one of the most diverse asset portfolios of any major acrylics producer and its state-of-the-art facilities benefit from an on-going investment programme

to further enhance its capabilities. However, it is not only the company’s high-tech plants that benefit from an ongoing investment programme; significant sums are also committed each year to research and development. Over the last 15 years the company has developed a completely new technology route to MMA, called ‘Alpha’. This breakthrough technology is based upon readily available raw materials such as ethylene, methanol and carbon monoxide and has allowed the company to significantly improve operational costs and remove constraints on plant size, providing the opportunity to reduce capital investment and achieve substantially improved operating economics. The novel research into catalysis and new processes has resulted in the company winning many prestigious awards for innovation.

Product purity is an essential market requirement for high-margin optical polymers, such as those required for LED/ LCD TV monitors and PDA screens. Thanks to the introduction of the advanced Alpha process, the MRC Group, including Lucite International continues to lead in this field and many others. Mr Bailey said, “We are fully committed to sustainable production within our business and this is being achieved through continuous improvement in the energy usage and raw material efficiency of our existing assets as well as investment in new routes to MMA for the future. All of Lucite International’s major raw materials can potentially be made from bio-feedstocks and we are currently working with a number of companies to assess the feasibility. We have a core team of scientists working on our ultimate goal of converting renewable feedstocks directly into our main products using completely new, biotechnology processes. “We are working with many customers in the coatings market supporting them as they move from solvent based to waterbased processes, which Is in keeping with our drive for more sustainable products. “We are not only looking at the existing markets such as coatings and decorative paints, but also at new applications such as LED lighting. In fact LED opens up a whole new world for us: one where it is possible to

be even more creative. So we see this as an important growth area for us with another stemming from use in electronics, eg flat screen TVs, mobile phones and tablets, which also offer us major business opportunities. “Other drivers include the emerging economies where consumer-led sales in electronics, white goods and sanitary-ware are seeing good growth. Most bathrooms these days feature a bath made of white acrylic and we supply the acrylic sheet for the production of these baths. In Europe our acrylic sheet accounts for around 50 per cent of acrylic bath production in the region. Whatever market sectors we are involved in, the most important thing from our customers’ perspective is the reliability of supply and the guarantee of consistent, high quality products. “What differentiates us from our competitors is our flexible approach to customer relations and our commitment to provide optimal solutions tailored to our customers’ individual needs. We have a very loyal customer base and we work in close partnership with them. This is especially the case in the resins business where products such as bone and dental cement rely on one-to-one contact and where formulae can be custom made. In other areas such as sanitary-ware, we have developed an easy-shaping acrylic sheet that moulds faster and more easily opening up the design options for our customers and enhancing production economies at the

operational level. We continue to build on our reputation for innovation and quality and are fully committed to sustainability.”

Increasing global demand MMA is the major building block for a diverse range of acrylic applications in industries worldwide, including: automotive, construction, retail and electronics. Demand for MMA has grown year on year at a rate above global GDP and is currently running at over 3 million tes/annum. There is therefore a need for continuous investment in new monomer capacity and, with its range of technologies, the MRC Group including Lucite International is well placed to meet this market growth. The company’s Monomers Business Director EMEA, Malcolm Kidd, said, “We continue to invest heavily in the continuous improvement of our assets, in new plants and new technologies and this means that we reliably provide the right product in the right place at the right time. In addition, we also have indepth back-up supply lines worldwide. Today we have a good share of the merchant market and great visibility. Furthermore, the powerhouse economies such as Germany, UK and Benelux are seeing consistent growth whilst emerging markets in eastern Europe and the Middle East also continue to gain ground. A significant contributor to that region will be the world’s biggest MMA and pMMA plant,

which is currently underway in Saudi Arabia as a result of a joint venture between our parent company: MRC and the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC).This will significantly strengthen our presence in the region and form part of our global sustainability programme thanks to the value adding benefits of our advanced Alpha technology.”

Innovative products As well as the company’s strong asset base and investment in development of production technology, there is interesting work underway for creative solutions and innovative new products, particulalry in the area of pMMA acrylic materials for medical diagnostic devices, which require transparent materials that exhibit excellent light transmission properties.

Thanks to Lucite international’s wide range of optical grades and a tailor-made approach, the company is able to deliver best-in-class optical performance. In the area of co-extrusion, the company’s acrylic coatings can protect a customer’s sensitive substrates. Rowena Sellens is Lucite International’s General Manager for its Materials businesses in EMEA and she told Industry Europe, “We provide unique solutions and these are most important in the high-value sectors. Our Diakon® and Elvakon® brands bring a broad range of benefits to substrate materials and those who are looking for creative solutions need look no further than Lucite International’s comprehensive in-house R&D. Our strong asset base and advanced technologies enable us to be

extremely flexible. pMMA offers unique versatility backed by strong technical development whatever the application.” In speciality polymers and resins, Lucite International leads the field with its highperformance acrylics and the company offers unparalleled expertise in specialised areas that require high gloss and hardness combined with superior strength and abrasion resistance. The company’s General Manager for resins, Ann-Marie Stannard said, “Our outstanding brands, Lucite®, Colacryl® and Elvacite® lead the field in the dental and medical bone cement markets. We remain focused on bespoke, speciality markets and have always been present at the high-end of these as a world-class provider. Although traditionally we have been ‘Eurocentric’ a

Central Industrial Services (Northern) Limited Having served the Lucite International site here on Teeside for over four years offering a full range of production, maintenance and waste management services, we are proud to be working as part of the “team”. Through development and investment in both new technology and personnel, together, we have helped reduce production downtime whilst also improving the safety culture on site. Operating under a number of “Key Performance Indicators” we strive to continually “Drive” the contract forward with plans in 2014 which will include new and improved catalyst handling techniques and improved employee competency. With a site based team managed by Mr Tom Southall and support from regional management and operations teams, the Lucite contract is one which we are very proud of and look forward to developing into the future offering stability and security to our employees. www.centralindustrialservices.co.uk

Parsons Brinckerhoff Parsons Brinckerhoff is a global consulting firm assisting public and private clients to plan, develop, design, construct, operate and maintain critical infrastructure around the world. The Major Projects and Commercial Services business unit provides high quality project control and consultancy services. We specialise in annual maintenance programmes, overhauls, turnarounds and capital projects and are skilled in all aspects of an investment life cycle. Operating from Teesside, we provide a tailored and professional approach to meet the needs of North East, UK and international based clients via innovative, cost effective solutions.

Cordell As one of the three partners working with Lucite International within the Concord alliance, Cordell Group Limited provides mechanical, fabrication and E/I construction services. Cordell believe that developing strong working partnerships combined with mutual innovative thinking is a key area in the continual evolution of the existing contractor/client relationship. Reinforcing these principles, Gary Lawson, Director said, “The establishment and propagation of long term mutually beneficial partnerships with our main client base is fundamental to our business development strategy and the success of the Company moving forward.” This collaborative approach has illustrated effective use of resources whilst delivering ongoing efficiency improvements and ensuring exceptional SHE objectives are achieved. The success of such innovative industrial partnerships as the “Concord Alliance” which benefit both manufacturer and contractor on a long term basis has assisted Lucite in maintaining their strong global competitive advantage. Cordell are committed to the long term success of the alliance and looking forward to the continued success Lucite, to the mutual benefit of all members.

We are proud and honoured to be providing a wide range of consultancy services for over 8 years to Lucite International, and thoroughly enjoy working in the progressive and inventive working culture at Lucite International. With approximately 150 offices around the world, Parsons Brinckerhoff can provide in-country resources and expertise to clients venturing into new geographies, as well as a full range of services in the domestic market.

Strength in partnership brings benefits for Lucite Hertel is a leading international industrial services company supporting customers in the oil & gas, process and energy industries, with a coordinated range of customised solutions centred around access, insulation, corrosion protection, mechanical and pipework fabrication. Working throughout the entire lifecycle of customers’ industrial assets from new-build projects to maintenance, shutdowns, modifications and decommissioning, Hertel’s strength is its extensive experience of continuously improving safety, reliability and operational performance. Hertel has worked with Lucite for 13 years and the last 11 have been under a strategic partnership known as the Concord Alliance. Specialist partners work closely together drawing upon, and sharing, their multi-skilled workforce to ensure the best team is available to work on the 8,800 annual maintenance routines, multiple mini overhauls to individual production units, capital project works, along with the tri-annual Site Wide Overhaul carried out at the Billingham site. The flexibility of the Concord Alliance has delivered efficiency savings in fixed costs including significant reduction in management and preliminary costs. Crucially, the Alliance has also concentrated on, and aligned with, Lucite’s world-class SHE performance. Paul Raper, the Concord Alliance Manager, comments: “In the Alliance we work as a team sharing best practice and delivering efficiency savings across all areas.”

lot more of our business in the future will be about growth beyond Europe. In terms of entering new markets and our next generation of products, we are moving ahead with more innovative R&D and have a number of new products in the pipeline. This will allow us to look at the wider medical devices market and explore how we can best serve the use of acrylics in the LED and 3D printing market sectors.”

Improving productivity and efficiency For Lucite International, expanding its manufacturing capability is key to meeting its customers’ needs and to driving down the unit cost of production to improve competitiveness. Production output at the UK’s Cassel site, the largest MMA site within the MRC Group, has increased by more than 30 per cent over the last 15 years. In addition to this, significant reductions in the usage of raw materials and energy have been achieved resulting in continuous reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, productivity at the company’s cast acrylic sheet plant, which is responsible for the Lucite® range of products for bathrooms and a broad range of Perspex® products has increased significantly and the next stage of capacity expansion is currently underway. Paula Tinkler, Lucite International’s Global Procurement Director commented, “Improv-

ing efficiency and cost-effectiveness at all levels is key to our ongoing success, and because we operate in every region in the world we have many options. This can be in terms of lower labour costs at some of our facilities and now with shale gas in the USA we can also benefit from this market dynamic. Another key area for us is risk management and whatever happens, our priority is to protect our customers’ interests and supply of products. “We need to be prepared at all times to manage the many factors that may create distortions to the market, caused for example by natural disasters or political unrest. We also need to strike a balance between lowest cost and lowest risk. An example of how consumer trends can also dramatically influence our raw material markets was experienced by the polycarbonate industry when the market collapsed a few years ago due to the demise of the CD market and the rise in the number of younger people downloading their music. “Twenty or thirty years ago there was not much changing in the marketplace, but today the pace of change has accelerated and can quickly impact our markets. We are the MMA world’s largest consumer of acetone and we use a lot of gas, electricity and oxygen in our manufacturing processes; we are working intensively to reduce our

consumption and to meet the targets we have set ourselves in our global environmental management plan.”

People and values Lucite International has a simple philosophy, which embraces the concept of continuous improvement. It is embodied in its brand promise of ‘Going Further’ in all that it does. This single-minded determination to achieve excellence means that the company sets itself the highest standards in safety, health and environmental performance, resulting in a positive contribution to its customers and partners, its workforce and the industries and communities that it serves. As Phil Bailey observed, “It all comes back to the people who make all of the above possible. We continue to invest in our people, building on the great legacy of experience and wealth of knowledge that exists in the organisation – the average service of employees across the European business is more than 20 years. Attracting and retaining new talent, developing people and generating personal growth is essential to building an enthusiastic, diverse, multi-skilled workforce and successful business.” n For further details of Lucite International’s innovative products and services visit: www.luciteinternational.com

INVESTING FOR GLOBAL EXPANSION A part of the MOL Group, Tisza Chemical Group Plc (TVK) is the largest petrochemical complex in Hungary. In recent years the company has been seeking out new investment opportunities to strengthen its position in Hungary and in the foreign markets.

VK is an integral part of the Downstream division within the MOL group, a leading central European oil and gas corporation. The segment’s integration has been significantly enhanced in recent years through the optimisation of the group’s refinery and petrochemical production processes along the complete hydrocarbon value chain in accordance with the group’s philosophy: ‘from crude oil to plastics’. TVK produces ethylene and propylene from naphtha and gas oil, then processes these products using world-class technology to supply low-, medium- and high-density polyethylene and polypropylene products. TVK is producing commodity polymers in competitive qualities for the plastics processing industry, which products are fundamental for a wide range of industrial application and for production of a huge number of consumer goods that are essential to our everyday lives. The agricultural sector is the main user of their various types of foil products whilst they provide state-

of-the-art packaging materials for the food industry. They also supply a wide range of pipes for the construction industry and moulds for car manufacturers.

Flexibility is key TVK continuously follows the new market requirements and the changes to the reprocessing trends in order to maintain its constant product development process and to complete its product portfolio. The most successful development of the past 10 years was the Tipplen K 850 bimodal, a high molecular weight impact copolymer polypropylene grade for extrusion. Following its launch in 2010, the sale of this product accounted for 6 per cent of the company’s total polypropylene production. This innovation also enabled TVK to become a long-term supplier of the largest European corrugated pipe manufacturers in Germany, Poland and Austria. The Innovation Award received in 2012 from the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce was the

crowning glory at the end of this successful development process. TVK exports over 70 per cent of its production, mainly focusing on central and eastern Europe, although there are some important markets in western Europe too. The largest quantity of products is distributed in Italy, Germany and Poland. “In this critical market all polymer producers are looking for new, profitable segments. Manufacturers in eastern and western Europe – as experienced in the last two years – are able to maintain and even build their market position by taking advantage of their geographical position,” said a company spokesperson. “We intend to supply our partners with a continuous, reliable service. So their production forecast and efficient stock management are guaranteed. We review our sales strategy to meet the domestic market requirements year by year, and try to adjust it. This means we can meet the needs of the widest range of customers in

118 Industry Europe

Revesz Trans Ltd. is a significant part of the Revesz Group. It has Hungary’s biggest, most modern special vehicle park and well-qualified trained professionals, and is an outstanding representative of transportation and transport vehicle servicing. The company places a high priority on fulfilling the clients’ expectations. Also we try to create mutual trust and maintain a good relationship with them. Accuracy, assurance and flexibility are always provided to the clients. The vehicles are easy to use, providing fast and safe loading and unloading. With the help of the constant communication between the truck driver and the office (GPS, mobile telephone), the partners can get up-to-date information about their shipment’s location. The Révész Trans Ltd. has SQAS, GMP+ 4.1 and ISO 14001:2005 és ISO 9001:2009 certificates.

each segment. Primarily we aim to maintain our leading position in the domestic market as well as strengthening our position by developing new products that meet with customer’s expectations of the central and eastern European polymer markets where product demand is higher than the European average. We will also focus on improving the quality of our customer service and continue with the active product and customer portfolio management that has proven successful so far.” Besides large logistic depots, TVK operates smaller warehouses, from which they can supply customers with small orders. TVK is determined to reach all polyethylene and polypropylene processing partners in Hungary and aims to provide them with not only the product itself but with valueadded services that benefits both partners.

New butadiene plant The company’s management sees strong possibilities in the butadiene market. This positive outlook was behind its decision to build a butadiene extraction plant that provides a further option to enter the attractive segments of the synthetic rubber market. In the near future TVK will invest in building a 130 kt/annum capacity butadiene plant which is expected to start operation in 2015.

“The new plant will enable us to improve our position, as the demand for butadiene is less reliant on the market fluctuation due to its special usage, and therefore it is more profitable than trading with general plastic materials,” explained the spokesperson. The company intends to focus on the implementation of this strategic development project by the planned budget and start up the new plant by the deadline planned. TVK has continuously conducted energy saving and emission reducing development

programmes that are also used to identify potential saving opportunities in the production processes and in the operation control systems. Based on the results of these programmes the company design and carry out redevelopment projects in order to maintain and increase efficiency in energy consumption. Due to the external business environment TVK will continue with its strictly cost-effective operation and aims to continuously improve its operational efficiency whilst providing a safe n and environment-friendly operation.

120 Industry Europe

ADVANCING INNOVATION IN RAIL TECHNOLOGY Kolejowe Zakłady Nawierzchniowe “Bieżanów” (Railway Surfaces Company, KZN “Bieżanów”) of Poland is an enterprise with nearly seven decades of business traditions in the railway industry. The company focuses on innovation as the key driver of development and competitiveness. Piotr Sadowski reports for Industry Europe.

part of the most recent developments in advancing innovations, KZN “Bieżanów” is developing a major research and implementation programme on using bainite, a cutting-edge acicular microstructure that forms in steels at temperatures of 250-550 centigrade, depending on alloy content. This excellent source material used in railway surfaces significantly extends their durability and simplifies maintenance processes. “The project associated with using bainite in railway points began at “KZN Bieżanów” three years ago, with the support of EU funds dedicated to innovation, as well as in cooperation with technical universities in Kraków and the Polish Railway Institute,” says Jacek Paś, member of the board and development director at the company. “As a result, we have already managed to produce, install and test the first elements that use bainite, specifically the heart of a junction, the so-called ‘frog’, also known as common crossing.” This innovative solution has been tested for over a year now on one of the sections of the Warsaw railway used by low-speed trains

and the results have surpassed expectations. “We have received outstandingly positive utilisation feedback and that is why we are already planning the next stage of testing,” points out Mr Paś. “This time, bainite elements will be used in junctions located around the Kraków area PKP PLK (an administrator of the national railway infrastructure), where speeds and loads are significantly higher. We expect that this new type of junction steel will prove to have an even greater advantage over materials used previously.”

Rail and tram surfacing from A to Z Looking at business reality from the right perspective allows one to realise the true development potential of sectors perceived, often in Poland and other countries, to be neglected, such as the railway industry. KZN “Bieżanów” is leading the way in ensuring that the sector’s potential is maximised and this is pursued by the company – and the Group – by focusing on innovation, quality, safety and a complete offer. “These four simple pursuits, steadily implemented, have allowed us to become the

leader in the area of railway and tramway surfaces,” says Ryszard Leszczyński, president of KZN “Bieżanów”. “What is particularly important to point out is that our Group, made up of seven companies, led by KZN “Bieżanów”, focuses on complete servicing of investment projects and subsequent maintenance of railway surfaces, as well as ongoing complex support and servicing during their utilisation. We offer clients a complete service, starting with design and advisory work, through production and distribution, installation, service and so on. The joint vision of our Group, supported by innovations in products, services and a way to organise our business, gives us excellent perspectives for the future.”

Strength in the Group KZN Bieżanów Group is made up of the mother-company KZN “Bieżanów”, producing key elements of railway surfaces, and five other units: KZN Rail (implementation of railway and tramway surface investments); Sleeper Treatment Plant in Czeremcha (producer of wooden sub-junctions and founda-

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Leonhard Moll AG Group a reliable partner of railway operators in Europe.

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Based on both national and foreign standards we produce the following railway accessories: clip bolts, high tensile bearing - type bolts for rail joints, square head bolts for rail joints, square head bolts for railway turnouts, fish bolts with round and square head, hexagon nuts, spring washers Z-1, Z-2, Z-3, Fe-6 and others, rectangle head coach screws, Df-2 springs. High quality of our products is proved by Quality Certificate ISO 9001:2008 given us by BVQI. For fastening elements and joints for the permanent way we have certificates of the Polish Institute of Railway Transport, the HPQ Certificate from German Railways (DB AG) and the Q3 Certificate from Belgian Railways (SNCB). Fabryka Elementów Złącznych S.A. Ul. Fabryczna 14, 41-100 Siemianowice Śląskie, Poland Phone : +48 32 2205 120 - Fax: +48 32 2284 005 E-mail: fez@fez.pl - www.fez.pl

Nowosystem

Fabryka Elementów Złacznych S.A.

Nowosystem is a company, which operates in the field of

Fabryka Elementów Złacznych S.A., a company from

high-tech machining and welding. Such factors that define

Siemianowice Slaskie, is one of the oldest and Poland’s

our strategy as: focus on the growth and innovation, our

most famous fasteners manufacturers for mining, railway

continuously modernized machine park that is equipped

and engineering industries. The company’s origins go

with technologically advanced CNC machining centers

back to the 19th century, when a craft shop specializing in

and an experienced group of employees, allow us to carry

the production of screws, rivets and nuts was founded by

out even the most complex orders while maintaining the

the German industrialist Wilhelm Fitzner. After many legal

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tive prices. These features determine that our clients can

as a subsidiary stock company.

be found among the leaders of many industries, both in Poland and throughout Europe.

Currently, the company is organized according to the European requirements and standards and is one of the

As our partner, the “Bieżanów” railroad structure works

leading manufacturers of fasteners in Poland. A wealth of

are a role model. The cooperation between these two

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entities, lasting since 2011, is based on the permanent

deared us many customers from Poland and from almost

technological progress and mutual acquired competences.

all of Europe.

tions); Trade-Port (distribution of crucial materials used in constructing and maintaining railway surfaces); Vistula Rail Operator (complete servicing of railway sidings and logistical services); German daughtercompany GuW Gleis- und Weichentechnik GmbH (supplier of railway surfaces materials in Germany) and KZN “Bieżanów” & TALEGRIA (joint venture Polish-Spainish company provide turnouts solution in railway high speed technology). The Group was created precisely to change the traditional and unsustainable process of disjointed investments and maintenance of different areas of the railway surfaces industry in Poland, as well as outside of the country. This was necessary in order to improve and expand the range of products and services associated with railway infrastructure, most importantly, the all-important railway junctions. “By joining up the potential of the companies in our Group we can offer investors and general contractors of large infrastructural projects a complete offer made up of surface products, as well as wide-ranging construction, maintenance and logistical services linked to them,”

says Michał Gawroński, sales director at KZN “Bieżanów”. “We are fully aware of the changing conditions and circumstances in the sector and so our offer can be adjusted and varied as much as it is required by our clients.” While developing operations that take advantage of the synergies driven by the companies in the Group, the Group also draws additional strength from active cooperation in innovative projects with external partners. They include technical universities, science and research institutes, and other companies in the sector, who work together with KZN “Bieżanów” to implement outstanding and highly innovative projects. “The process of implementing innovations takes time and can be complex, particularly if executed by a company operating on its own,” says Mr Leszczyński. “It can be, however, significantly improved, not least in the time it takes to be put in place, if the factor of cooperation is added to the equation. For us, innovative cooperation is crucial, with entities in Poland, but also important players outside of the country, such as, for example, the Spanish company Talleres Alegria.”

Future of innovations For decades KZN “Bieżanów” has been shaping the market for railway surfaces, and one of the most important factors that has enabled this to happen has been the focus on research and development. The strategic core of this area of activity is performed by the R&D Office, whose role is to find, detail and implement all of the processes associated with innovation in the company. “Although officially created this year, informally we have been working as an R&D department for many years,” says Magdalena Kamińska, head of the R&D Office of KZN “Bieżanów”. “Our goal is the “High Speed Railway”, focusing on creating a complete range of processes and products which will enable us to become one of the leaders of the European railway surfaces producers sector. We will enter the market with complex solutions for railway lines designed for speeds between 200-250km/h. This is a long-term direction of innovative development for KZN “Bieżanów”, one that we will pursue to the best of our abilities. And, of course, innovation in all areas of our operations, will remain the key n focus of the Group.”

ENGINEERING SUCCESS A world leader in thin film technology, German-based Leybold Optics GmbH, a business unit of Switzerland-based Bühler, has a clear strategy to continue its long history of innovation, satisfaction and success well into the future. Emma-Jane Batey spoke to CFO and Head of Operations, Domenic von Planta to find out more.

stablished in its present form in 2000, Leybold Optics GmbH can easily trace its roots back more than 160 years. Today it is a world leader in optical thin film production equipment, with its founders, legendary pioneers Ernst Leybold and Wilhelm Carl Heraeus, instilling in the company from the very beginning a passion for and commitment to innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit. 124 Industry Europe

Leybold Optics GmbH with its headquarters in Alzenau, Germany, belongs to the Bühler Group, located in Switzerland. With more than 350 employees and a network of sales and service centres worldwide, the company’s main production sites are in Germany, China and the USA. Leybold Optics, part of Bühler since 2011, supplements the Bühler division Advanced Materials with its business units Grinding &

Dispersion (solutions for preparing printing inks, electronic materials and fine chemicals) as well as Die-Casting (die-casting equipment mainly focused on the automotive industry) through advanced technology and improved market access. Thanks to global market trends, these two Bühler business units, alongside Leybold Optics, offer strong growth potential. Leybold Optics’s association with Bühler offers attractive opportuni-

META-M 2900 Metallising equipment for the packaging industry

ties for actively sharing growth by taking advantage of its global platform. Also the know-how and the product portfolios of Leybold Optics and Bühler complement each other well along the functional layers value chain. In addition, combining the competencies of the two companies creates a large pool of expertise and experience that can be utilised for the development of innovative customer solutions. Leybold Optics is active in three core segments: Optics, Industrial and Large Area Coatings. These three segments have long been integral to the company.

impressive R&D capabilities, so by focusing on our process knowledge – what characteristics the layers shall have and how to put layers on to the materials – we can deliver an unrivalled service to our customers worldwide. “The end-product manufactured on our machines is something which consumers are confronted with in everyday life. It gives a longer lifetime to crisps and sweets through creating oxygen and water barriers. It makes the car lights as bright as they are. It also controls room temperature and makes you feel comfortable at home, to name just a few examples.”

Strategic developments

Advanced process knowledge

Now focusing solely on its three core segments, Leybold Optics will be making some structural changes. Mr von Planta states, “We believe this is the perfect time to really highlight our core strengths. The know-how around optical layers is tightly connected with our

In the future, Leybold Optics intends to draw attention to its advanced process knowledge in each of its markets. For its Optics division, the company produces thin film deposition systems for precision optics and eyeglass coatings as well as products for

the electronics industries. The Industrial division is focused on packaging, 3D applications for lighting and automotive as well as capacitors, while the Large Area Coatings division focuses mainly on architectural glass activities. Leybold looks to follow market trends in all the sectors it serves. These include ‘megatrends’ such as an aging population and changes in the distribution of wealth; increased use of mobile devices and flexible electronics; the increased processing of food; electro-mobility and the pressure for reduced energy consumption. Because of this, its outlook on the future is optimistic. It has also introduced some very successful innovations, including optical monitoring and sputtering for high-precision optics. Each of the three core segments adheres to Leybold Optics’s mission statement, which highlights the company’s position as a leading high-technology company. Mr von

APOLLON Glass coating equipment for versatile architectural glass applications

Industry Europe 125

126 Industry Europe

HELIOS High precision sputtering equipment for thin film coatings

Planta explained, “Our main mission is to develop and market machines that tap into the near-unlimited potential of optical thin film vacuum applications. These machines in turn enable our customers to manufacture superior or even unique products in a cost efficient manner. In all aspects of our work, we strive for the highest quality.”

A clear future Leybold Optics has long been driven by technological innovation in thin film machinery and it expects to become the world leader in optical thin films in the coming years. Mr von Planta adds, “Our competitive advantage is driven by our process knowledge and we are well aware that we must harness our strengths in order to boost our market position. By strategically focusing on our core segments within thin film applications, we can be sure that we will continue to offer a ‘best-in-class’ service to our customers worldwide.” With its diversified portfolio now more streamlined, its proven leadership in technical innovation well-established and its dedication to customer satisfaction unquestioned, it is clear that Leybold Optics is well positioned to achieve its ambitious goals. Mr von Planta concluded, “Everything is in place and proven to be the best it can be. By building on our incredible process knowledge in thin film and vacuum deposition equipment, Leybold Optics will achieve our aim of being the most renowned and widely used brand in n our markets.” Industry Europe 127

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Industry Europe – Issue 24.1

Articles inside

Advancing innovation in rail technology

Investing for global expansion TVK

Going offshore Remazel Engineering

The customer cure Elmet

In-depth success LNS

A strong position ALTA

Aiming for the best Lipik Glas

Global refrigeration specialist EPTA Group

Powering ahead Riello Elettronica

The geotechnical specialists Terratest

Perfection in your hands Wollsdorf

Dairy expert Lacpol Group

Energy-efficient building Huf Haus

Focus on Germany Allan Hall reports from Berlin

Winning business New orders and contracts

Tractors that make sense Farmtrac

Industry people Appointments

Tyres for extreme conditions Nokian Tyres

Moving on Relocations and expansions

Technology spotlight Advances in technology

Linking up Combining strengths