A niche market leader Wintersteiger

bronze castings. In addition, the company’s manufacturing group has been equipped with the latest state-of-the-art CNC and robotic machinery. These modern and comprehensive facilities mean that Omco is able to offer a diverse range of precision equipment and welding techniques that are able to meet any challenge and in turn offer significantly increased mould life.

Omco offers products for the hollow glass industry based upon specially developed castings in both grey and nodular iron and aluminium bronze. Throughout its many facilities the company has established the required level of expertise to enable it to manufacture any mould for any machine, whatever its shape or size. The company specialises in the production of glass moulds for a diverse range of industrial applications including food, beverages, spirits and pharmaceuticals.

The company’s ongoing success is also enhanced by its highly specialised expertise in the manufacture of pieces with complex geometry, including core-intensive mould production techniques. Furthermore, Omco’s foundries offer aluminium bronze castings as well as machining, painting, galvanising, pressure testing and many other value-added customer services.

The fine quality of the metals used by the company is assured by ISO-TS standards certified by Lloyds. In a new move to provide better logistics support for its customers, Omco has recently invested in new logistics systems including a fully automated warehouse, which improves the efficiency and accessibility of its products which are primarily destined for the automotive markets worldwide.

Energy-efficiency

The increasing international pressure for greater sustainability has resulted in a surge in the demand for Omco’s glass products, which are 100 per cent recyclable. This has enabled the company to increase capacity at three of its main European facilities. A joint venture with Hindustan National Glass of India added significantly to the company’s global manufacturing capability. This company operates under the name of Omco HNG Engineering Ltd, and has a modern plant which is equipped with the latest CNC machines and foundry equipment.

In addition, the company has also made significant investments in new technology at its Romanian, Croatian and UK production sites in order to meet the growing demand for energy-efficient, recyclable glass containers.

As well as saving energy costs, Omco is also able to manufacture its precision moulds with unparalleled speed and efficiency. The company’s Individual Sector (IS) is capable of producing more than 600 hollow glass products per minute from a single mould, and each mould has the ability to manufacture up to one million glass containers. Omco also applies a special nickel coating to protect the edges of each mould, thereby ensuring that there is no break-away.

Diverse market segments

Omco has seen exceptional growth of more than 20 per cent per annum in the last few years despite the global economic downturn. This has been attributed not to a major increase in volumes of products manufactured, but through achieving a better focus on serving its individual market sectors, which includes shorter, low and ultra-low series that employ more complex casting and special composite alloys. One of the company’s biggest market sectors is the automotive industry where the focus is on glass moulds and metalbased products. However, the company also delivers special alloys and castings tailored to satisfy the direct needs of key customers in other sectors of industry, such as agriculture, earthwork machinery, pumps and incinerators. Omco consistently looks to the world markets to identify new industry trends and consumer needs and it responds to these with tailormade, optimal solutions. n

A NICHE MARKET LEADER

The Austria-based Wintersteiger AG comprises a number of business units producing machines and related accessories as diverse as ski service, agriculture, wood processing and levelling. It has been able to maintain its leading position thanks to its decision to position itself as a highly specialised niche supplier to all the sectors it serves. Victoria Hattersley reports.

Originally established in 1953 as a producer of agricultural machines, Wintersteiger has grown through the years among others also via a number of strategic acquisitions in several different sectors. The common thread linking them together, as we shall see, is that for each sector the group focuses on providing specialised, individual machine solutions for niche markets as opposed to mass production.

Headquartered in Ried, Austria, the Wintersteiger Group today comprises 20 different subsidiaries worldwide across five key business areas – Seedmech (Agriculture), Sports (Ski service & Rental Solutions); Woodtech (Wood Processing); Levelling (Kohler Maschinenbau GmbH) and Plant Solutions (VAP Gruber Automations GmbH). These subsidiaries are spread across Europe (including Russia), North and South America and the Far East. Altogether it employs 850 people, with the majority of these (550) located at its headquarters.

Constant innovation is the watchword for Wintersteiger. Each year it invests more than 7 per cent of its turnover in R&D and aims to introduce a brand new product for one of its business areas every year. This year, as we shall see below, it was the turn of its business unit Sports with its new ‘Omega’ product line.

According to CEO Reiner Thalacker: “We have a ‘patent road map’ to help us decide when each new product will be completed and released. To aid this, we have more than 100 engineers across the group working to keep our product development and launch plans to schedule.”

Strong agricultural tradition

Wintersteiger’s agricultural business unit, Seedmech, concentrates on the production of harvesters and planters for agricultural field research purposes. According to Mr Thalacker: “Our specialist agricultural machines are not mass-produced for normal farmers but are for plant breeding researchers such as government organisations, universities and international companies, who are working to improve the efficiency of food production worldwide.”

For example, using state-of-the-art CAD systems the company’s engineers at Ried might be working on machines which offer more efficient ways to plant or harvest corn. It produces machines for cereals, maize, green fodders such as clover, and rice. This is perhaps the biggest growing market for Wintersteiger today because of the growing importance of bioenergy, or the pressing need to produce more food on a global scale.

Growth in sporting products

Wintersteiger’s Sports business unit is another very important area for growth. Here it offers a diverse range of products mainly for the winter sports market. These include manual and fully automated machines for the repair and servicing of skis and snowboards, as well as special race service machines for professional applications, related accessories and spare parts. Alongside this is its range of complete rental, depot and POS solutions including all the necessary software, storage and lockers needed for both individual and large-scale use.

It was within this business area that Wintersteiger achieved one of its most highprofile contract wins in recent years, for the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. According to Mr Thalacker: “Over the past three years this contract has earned us five million euros. We supplied absolutely all the key machinery for Sochi, such as ski service and rental systems, lockers and anything else that was needed.”

When asked how Wintersteiger managed to secure this prestigious contract over so many of its competitors, its CEO explains: “We are the global leader in this niche so we can offer complete solutions, from machines to software and rental systems, all from one place. This is highly attractive for clients. As an example: for ski rental you need racks for storage, software, lockers, driers and so on. Then you need the corresponding after sales service after the ski service machinery has been installed. All of this we were able to do. In addition, the fact that we already have a subsidiary in Russia also worked in our favour.”

The start of 2014 saw the introduction of a brand new product line, ‘Omega’. Launched at the ISPO trade show, this is a new ‘family’ of stone and belt grinding machines for manual ski servicing. The most significant feature of this new product line is that it gives clients the flexibility to order a machine according to their precise needs. “It is this flexibility factor,” says Mr Thalacker, “that makes it different to everything else on the market and we have already had great feedback from it.”

In fact, the year 2013 saw the highest turnover yet for the group’s Sports business unit thanks to the sale of a record number of ski service automats. This is only set to grow as Wintersteiger continues to diversify its interests in this highly lucrative market. For example, in 2011 it acquired the company Bootdoc, which offers insoles and compression socks for sports shoes. This was followed in 2013 by the purchase of Hotronic – a producer of foot warmers and drying systems for feet and boots. Both of these companies are part of the group’s Sports products area.

And what was the strategic reason behind these purchases? Mr Thalacker says: “Both these companies complement our existing winter sports business area but may ultimately help us to move away from