At Fakuma 2018, Engel Austria shows a good spirit!

Although the strong global growth in recent years has begun to turn one-sided, the injection molding machine and system solutions supplier forecasts that the company will continue to maintain moderate growth in the current financial year, especially in Asia and German-speaking European countries, is moving towards a positive trend.

Engel also further increased the number of its employees worldwide during the fiscal year.

Specifically, by the end of March 2019, when the 2018/2019 financial year ends, the Engel Group will have a turnover of approximately 1.6 billion euros, an increase of 6% over the previous year.

In the 2017/2018 financial year, Engel's global turnover increased by 11 percent to €1.51 billion.

" The Engel Group has consistently experienced the largest growth in revenue in Asia." Dr. Christoph Steger, CSO of ENGEL Holding, said at Fakuma 2018, "And Asia continues to grow very dynamically."

Germany remains a key engine of innovation

On the other hand, the latest developments in North America are not encouraging. After several years of strong growth, at the end of the second quarter of the 2018/2019 fiscal year, Engel's growth in North America was lower than last year.

The slowdown in this growth is mainly due to some large international conglomerates adopting a wait-and-see approach in line with the latest developments in economic policy, while some smaller local players have continued to invest.

All in all, the trade dispute makes it very difficult to make forecasts, especially as it may affect European exports.

Many international business groups have their headquarters in Europe, from which they procure machines and production solutions for their factories around the world. So far, there are no signs of a downturn in European exports.

Following the pace of growth in Asia, Engel can now confirm further growth in Europe's German-speaking countries (also known as the "DACH countries ", which include Germany, Austria and Switzerland).

" Our orders in the DACH region are now higher than they were a year ago." "Steger explained.

Among them, Germany remains the market with the highest turnover and continues to be a key engine of innovation for Engel.

Engel's success in achieving 50% sales growth in Germany over the past five years has been attributed to two factors: first, the global expansion of many German companies; Second, demanding projects that require the development of a high level of technology.

Strengthen team building to meet new demands

In addition to the increase in turnover, the 2018/2019 financial year also saw the largest increase in the number of employees in Engel's history. By the end of the financial year, Engel will have 6,800 employees worldwide, about half of whom will be based in Austria.

Engel is improving its response to the changing needs of its customers by increasing human resources and strengthening the training of its teams.

The increasing trend of digitalisation and process integration and automation has led to an increasing demand for consulting services.

In addition, networks and connectivity are creating new business models. With this, Engel will be able to better support processors in their daily production operations.

Therefore, in addition to increasing sales, Engel has also stepped up efforts to enhance the capabilities of its global team, especially in terms of service.

Simple: Success factors

From a technical point of view, continuous improvement of this very mature injection molding process is a major challenge, and Engel always focuses its attention on improving the user friendliness of the system.

The acceleration of process integration and production process automation not only improves production efficiency and quality, but also increases the complexity of the production process, which often runs counter to the desire for greater efficiency and flexibility.

Engel is meeting the challenge with a strategy based on "simplicity".

As a system solution provider, Engel ensures that even complex production processes can be controlled simply and safely, without having to limit the functional scope of each machine and system. This is what determines competitiveness and success. This will be even more true in the future than it is in the present.

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