MUNICH, GERMANY (May 21, 1:15 p.m. ET) — After two recent management changes at Netstal-Maschinen AG, parent company KraussMaffei Group last week shed some light on product development strategy at the two companies.
In October last year Netstal announced the departure of marketing manager Reto Morger, while CEO Bernhard Merki left in April.
On the eve of last week's GX series machine launch, vice president of technologies, Karlheinz Bourdon, told European Plastics News that both KraussMaffei and Netstal will work together and pool their engineering efforts.
At a briefing the next day at the GX machine series launch event, Hans Ulrich Golz, KraussMaffei president of global injection molding machinery, added that there are technical challenges with the new company structure. But he sees advantages in economies of scale through combining machine development at KraussMaffei in Munich and Netstal in Näfels, Switzerland.
Golz explained: “Netstal produces highly dynamic and very long life machines, but this also means higher cost machines. But we could use some less cost-relevant Netstal parts in KraussMaffei machines.”
And although KraussMaffei “operates in a more price sensitive market, there will be synergy effects for both KraussMaffei and Netstal through joint machinery development,” Golz added.
In terms of marketing, “there will be some regions where the KraussMaffei and Netstal brand machines will continue to be marketed separately. But others where this activity will be combined,” Golz stated.