First published by British Plastics and Rubber on May 8th 2018. For original story click here.
Engel has announced that it has broken the €1.5 billion sales barrier for its 2017/2018 financial year.
ENGEL
Announcing the news at NPE in Orlando this week, Dr. Christoph Steger, Engel’s CTO, said the Group’s overall sales of €1.51billion showed “real growth in the market” and a maintaining of its position in key global sectors.
The US is one of the most important sales regions for Engel, he explained, with more than a quarter of its worldwide sales coming from the American markets.
Of particular note was the Mexican market, where the Group’s subsidiary has reported “an all time record” turnover since it was established, mainly due to the booming automotive manufacturing industry in the country and the demand for lightweight components. “We don’t expect this growth in Mexico to waive,” Steger added.
Investing in Capabilities
Dr. Stefan Engleder, Engel CEO, said that the global sales force had done “a tremendous job”, but that there was a stress on the company’s supply chain and production plants.
This, he said, was the reason the Group has embarked on a robust investment programme through to 2020, which, he added, is likely to see a 30 percent overall increase in the Engel’s worldwide production capacity. This includes the largest investment of €160million in its production site in St. Valentin, Austria, for the manufacture of its large injection moulding machines.
Industry 4.0
Both in terms of Engel’s NPE showing and its worldwide operations, the focus is still on Industry 4.0 and encouraging customers to tap into the full potential of their machines.
“People get fed up of seeing Industry 4.0, as they think it’s just high gloss presentations,” said Engleder. “But we say it’s not about presenting and powerpointing, we have these solutions ready. It’s not just a IT issue, from the top man down to the operating level, we need to get everyone talking about Industry 4.0.”
Connecting directly into Industry 4.0, Engel’s newest e-connect platform has been launched in time for NPE. This enables the simplification and speed-up of communication between Engel and processors, whilst providing an overview of the machinery, the processing status of service and support orders and the price and availability of spare parts – any time, anywhere via a digital portal.
Wintec launch
The Engel Group announced prior to NPE starting that it would use the show to launch its Wintec brand of injection moulding machines into the American markets of the US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
The move, said Engleder, was to open up a new sales channel for the general purpose market in the regions.
“There is a big general purpose market in the Americas and this market has a strong demand for standard machines,” said Engleder. “When you talk about standard machines you need reduced complexity overall – but of course you need to have high quality and reliability. Therefore we have our two Wintec products and these two products fit perfectly for these needs.”
The Wintec t-win and e-win injection moulding machines, one all-electric and one servo-hydraulic, will have a short lead time for delivery in America, says the company, owing to capacity expansions in China where they are built.
In terms of the customers it is hoping to target, Engleder said it will be “an entirely new customer base” but there would naturally be some crossover.
“We have some experience from China and the rest of Asia where there’s just a small overlap of customers with both Engel and Wintec machines. It could be that existing customers in the Americas use premium brands, but need general purpose machinery too and would choose a Wintec brand to fulfil that need, coming from the Engel family.”
You can read more about the Wintec launch here.
