New hall due to full order books
24.10.2012
Scheuchl company invests five million euros
Published in the Straubinger Tagblatt
At the special plant and machine manufacturer Scheuchl from Ortenburg in the district of Passau, the new assembly and storage hall is ready for operation. Due to well-filled order books, the new building had become necessary, said Ulf Scheuchl, one of the company’s three managing directors. The company invested around five million euros.
The new building is the fifth hall on the company premises and, at just over 2,400 square metres, also the largest to date. Twenty new jobs will be created in connection with the expansion. “The construction of the hall was actually already planned at an earlier point,” says Scheuchl. The plans were already finished in 2008, but then the financial and economic crisis intervened. It was not until the end of last year that the company took up the plans again, because space was slowly becoming scarce at Scheuchl. “We have a very good order situation, as the projects we have to realise are becoming ever larger,” explains the managing director. In addition, customers are increasingly demanding the implementation of their projects entirely from a single source.
The company mainly manufactures special systems for the automotive industry, supplying both the manufacturers directly and their suppliers. The Ortenburg company therefore observes the current mood among car manufacturers regarding the weak European markets very closely, according to Scheuchl. “At the moment we are not yet feeling any effects on our order situation,” he says. The order books for the special machines are full. “In plant engineering we could still accept the occasional order,” says Scheuchl. However, at one or another supplier the company had already noticed that production volumes had declined.
Scheuchl’s largest customer is currently BMW, according to the managing director. But the Ortenburg company does not restrict its products to one sector; it also manufactures for the pharmaceutical, chemical and textile industries, among others.
Scheuchl does not only supply customers domestically. The systems and machines also go throughout the rest of Europe and to China. “Asia in particular is becoming an increasingly important market for us,” says Scheuchl. In the USA, on the other hand, there is currently no business to be done. There, demand has collapsed since the beginning of the crisis. But Scheuchl says: “We have not written off that market. We firmly plan to push business forward there again as soon as this becomes possible.”
The company currently employs around 120 people at its headquarters in Ortenburg and at the Ingelheim site. Last year Scheuchl generated sales of 15 million euros. “This year sales will definitely be higher,” the managing director predicts. Foreign business accounts for around 30 percent of total sales.
