Engel
Engel's newly expanded site at St Valentin, Austria
ENGEL is reporting a fourth consecutive year of growth with revenues of €1.5 billion Euros expected for the current financial year.
This is an increase from the €1.36 billion Euros it achieved the previous year and the company says that it is “very optimistic” about the coming months.
"We are very happy with the development of the business,” commented Dr Stefan Engleder, CEO of the Engel Group, at the Fakuma fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany. "We have continued to achieve growth in all regions and all relevant industries.”
The regional split in terms of revenues remains unchanged, with Europe responsible for 55 percent and the Americas holding a strong position at 24 percent.
Production capacities being expanded; focus on composites
To meet the worldwide increase in demand for its products, just over three years ago Engel began the most comprehensive investment programme in the history of the company. Altogether, over €375 million Euros will be invested into its production facilities alone by 2020.
"The first projects with a total volume of close to 120 million euros have been completed,” explained Engleder. "We are working at full speed to rapidly drive the expansion forward, and are continuously readjusting plans and priorities to the actual conditions."
The largest ongoing construction project is the expansion of the large machine plant in St. Valentin, Austria. In August 2017 an additional production hall was put into operation. This expands the production area by more than 4,000 square metres.
As part of this expansion, the centre for lightweight composite technologies, also located in St. Valentin will also be expanded. “Engel will continue with its quest to become leader in composite technologies that it started some years ago,” Engleder continued. “Composites are the future of the automotive industry so of course this is a very big area of interest for us.”
Industry 4.0 is "the future"
Industry 4.0 is one of the strongest growth drivers worldwide, said Engleder, adding that this involves both changes in production processes as well as new forms of collaboration.
"More and more, we are accompanying our customers throughout the entire life cycle of injection moulding machines and production cells,” Engleder said.
Among other things, this involves even more intense consulting in planning production solutions, new possibilities in after-sales service such as predictive maintenance, continuous process optimisation and the flexible adaptation of production solutions to changing tasks.”
Engleder said that Engel’s ‘Inject 4.0’ system is now operating in the market and is receiving a good reponse. “The future is in these systems and connected technologies. They might not be a new machine or robot but they are certainly important developments which we believe can bring huge benefits to the industry.”