One year after the merger to create the largest extrusion brand worldwide, the management team of battenfeld-cincinnati, Bad Oeynhausen/Vienna, has taken stock of its positive development. Walter Häder, Division Manager Infrastructure, comments: “Both internal and external indicators point towards an economic upturn. With our new, jointly developed extrusion solutions, and thanks to our global production, sales and service network, we are able to cater to the needs of the emerging markets and can thus expect further growth.”
The extrusion equipment manufacturer is now clearly set for profitable growth. Towards this end, the global market shares in the core markets are to be increased, and battenfeld-cincinnati aims to expand in strategically interesting new markets as well. “At present, we plan to strengthen our position in Asia and Russia”, Häder explains.
These regions, and South America, too, are currently experiencing significant growth, particularly in the area of infrastructure. Optimal supply and distribution of water and fossil fuels is still an important issue in these countries. The booming trend towards replacing conventional pipes made of metal or concrete with plastic pipes is continuing. The situation in Northern Africa and the Middle East is presenting some problems at present. Financing major projects has become difficult due to the political changes.
The Packaging Division is pleased about its good order situation. The main contributing factor is the strong demand for thermoforming sheet manufacturing equipment for the packaging market. While the demand for WPC profiles in the Construction Division, mainly from Europe, Japan and the USA, has remained constant, the demand for PVC window profile production machinery has been rather slack over the last two years. “But now, finally, the turnaround also seems to have been reached in the Construction Division, and PVC profile production equipment is in demand once again. The profile manufacturers are pleased about full order books and are investing in modern technology”, the Division Manager, Rainer Kottmeier, sums up the market situation in his sphere of responsibility, which is Construction.
Now that internal restructuring in the wake of the merger has been successfully completed, cooperation across local facilities within the newly established Divisions of Infrastructure, Construction and Packaging has yielded considerable technological success: the highlights of the individual Divisions include the new solEX high-performance single-screw extruder series, the 3-step greenpipe concept, whose components have made it possible to reduce the length of the cooling section and energy consumption by up to 50 %, the twinEX parallel twin-screw extruder series, and a special machine series for direct PET extrusion.
“We have successfully pooled the knowledge which existed in both companies and utilized it to create optimized machine technology. In doing so, we have put great emphasis on efficient concepts which give our customers the opportunity to reach high outputs and to achieve extremely resource-saving production as well”, Dr. Henning Stieglitz explains. The first customers are already operating extruders of the new generation on their production floors and have confirmed these improvements. “With our new machine concepts, we are optimally prepared to meet the demands of the growing market”, is the view unanimously expressed by the management team.
