Brückner Group USA buys new HQ site

Dover, N.H. — Brückner Group USA will move later this year to a larger headquarters in Dover to add capabilities and provide more domestic support to processors reshoring production.

The group currently operates out of a 20,000-square-foot facility in Portsmouth, N.H., about 20 minutes from Dover, with 75 employees.

Company officials purchased a 72,000-square-foot plant for the new HQ that sits on 14 acres in case an expansion is needed.

Brueckner Group USA sells and services the Brückner Group GmbH family of products in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The group operates as a separate entity to support the products from Brückner Maschinenbau, Brückner Servtec, Kiefel Technologies and PackSys Global.

The new U.S. base is expected to be operating by the end of 2022 for sales and service of products from Brückner Maschinenbau and Brückner Servtec, which offer production lines and services for the film stretching industry; Kiefel, which offers thermoforming, molded fiber, automation, tooling joining and medical technology; and PackSys Global, which builds lines for manufacturing plastic tubes and folding and slitting machines for plastic caps.

The new site was purchased in December 2021 and will help Brückner Group USA strengthen and grow its activities in North America, according to President and CEO Matt Sieverding.

The new tech center will add training capabilities for a range of products, let the company build up the process engineering team and open the door to develop customer-specific processes in Dover.

The new HQ is a "visible statement" that Brückner Group believes in the positive future of the North American market, Sieverding said in a news release.

"The new, much larger facility will allow Brueckner Group USA to bring additional capabilities to the important North American market. Accelerated by the COVID pandemic, the reshoring trend of manufacturing requires the suppliers to also shorten their support lines. Based on this, Brückner Group USA has more than doubled its sales and service team over the last two years."

The company now has more than 35 service techs to support the product lines.

The focal point of the new HQ will be a tech center with several full-scale production machines and services for Kiefel's plastic and fiber thermoforming technology and Brückner Maschinenbau's KARO 5.0-brand lab stretcher and a Brückner Servtec workshop for clip and chain refurbishment.

Other lab machines will be used to further research and development in partnership with customers and universities.

The machinery in the tech center also will allow for operator training before the arrival of new equipment at the customer site.

In addition, the larger building also offers additional spare parts storage as well as clip and chain and tool refurbishing.