KraussMaffei AG generated record sales of 1.1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) for fiscal year 2010-11, ended Sept. 30 — topping the old record of 1.05 billion euros in 2007-08.
CEO Dietmar Straub announced the results Oct. 19 at Fakuma in Friedrichshafen. The trade show news conference was the last one for Straub, the top executive at the Munich-based plastics machinery maker since 2007.
Jan Siebert will take over Jan. 1 as CEO; Straub leaves at the end of December. In Friedrichshafen, KM officials thanked Straub for leading the company through major changes and the recession.
Straub said, “Together we have restructured KraussMaffei and led it successfully through the crisis.” He thanked the group's 3,900 employees around the world, and said the machinery company is on solid ground.
“We really are having record figures. This is the highest order intake of the group, ever,” he said.
Straub, 57, declined to say where is going, or whether he will remain in the plastics industry.
He is a veteran of Mannesmann Group. He worked in executive positions since the mid-1980s with the German industrial conglomerate that had owned the plastics machinery businesses.
The current owner, Chicago-based Madison Capital Partners, in 2007 promoted Straub to run what was then called Mannesmann Plastics Machinery GmbH.
During Straub's term, the machinery group sold German injection press maker Demag Plastics Machinery to Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd. of Japan, and brought the Berstorff compounding extruder business under KraussMaffei, which makes extruders for pipe and profiles.
At Fakuma, officials said KM merged the marketing functions of its Netstal and KraussMaffei PET preform-molding press businesses under the control of Netstal-Maschinen AG in Näfels, Switzerland, effective Oct. 1. The machines will continue to be marketed under their current brand names of PET-Line and PETForm.
Bernhard Merki, Netstal's president and CEO, said the group will benefit from a single sales channel for PET injection presses.
Thomas Anderegg will run the combined PET business. He has been in charge of Netstal's sales, marketing and applications departments since 2009.
In other news, Karlheinz Bourdon, managing director of KraussMaffei Technologies, said production has begun at KraussMaffei's 16,900-square-foot addition in Munich for automation and robot production, a sector that “stayed very robust” during the recession.
KraussMaffei also announced the departure of Netstal marketing manager Reto Morger, who has been with the company in Näfels for 14 years.
At Fakuma, KraussMaffei molded push-pull-style closures on a SpinForm press, using a cube mold from Zahoransky Formenbau GmbH. The total integrated manufacturing stack mold uses an axial rotary cube, and two assembly platens outside the mold, so the system can perform complex assembly operations quickly.
KraussMaffei Berstorff presented a new degassing system for the ZSFE twin-screw side feeder, which is used on ZE, UTX and ZE UT compounding extruders.
