‘With the establishment of HÖRMANN Logistik Polska Sp. z o.o., we are launching our AutoStore® activities in Eastern Europe,’ said Oliver Vujcic, managing director of HÖRMANN Logistik.

In this issue of mittendrin, the cover story is ‘Shaping the future’, and we provide some insight into the process of strategic development and the strategy of the HÖRMANN Group. We also explain the main strategic thrusts aimed at boosting our competitiveness, as well as the objectives that we are intending to achieve by 2025.

HÖRMANN Industries GmbH (corporate bond, WKN: A2TSCH) today published its financial results for the first six months of 2021. In the reporting period, the Group's sales increased by EUR 62.1 million year-on-year from EUR 234.2 million to EUR 296.3 million, of which around EUR 15 million was attributable to material price effects not affecting earnings. 

The theme for this issue of HÖRMANN’s mittendrin magazine is ‘We’re shaping innovation’, and we report on the wide variety of activities that the Group is undertaking in the research and development of innovative new products, technologies and services.

HÖRMANN Industries GmbH (corporate bond, WKN: A2TSCH) today published its financial results for the first three months of 2021. In the reporting period, the Group's sales increased year-on-year from EUR 130.7 million to EUR 138.2 million. The increase in sales resulted disproportionately from the Automotive and Communication divisions.

Funkwerk video systeme GmbH is overseeing an upgrade to video surveillance on the underground railway networks in Nuremberg and Fürth on behalf of Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft Nürnberg (VAG), the public transport operator for the company’s home city of Nuremberg. VAG and Funkwerk have been working together for many years, with Funkwerk having installed the first video systems for VAG in the 1980s. Trust, experience and expertise as a professional problem-solver and systems provider, a rapid 24/7 on-call service provided locally thanks to the company’s Nuremberg base as well as the level of protection provided for the investment made by VAG were all decisive criteria in the latter choosing Funkwerk for the project.

The latest generation of the TSE902 remote control unit from HÖRMANN Warnsysteme GmbH is the product of ten years of expertise in the TETRA digital radio standard. TETRA stands for Terrestrial Trunked Radio and allows emergency services such as the police, fire service and ambulance service to communicate with each other securely and reliably. During development, the team from HÖRMANN Warnsysteme worked closely with the committees of Germany’s Federal Agency for Public Safety Digital Radio (BDBOS) and Bundesverband Professioneller Mobilfunk e.V., an association for suppliers and users of mobile radio communication equipment. The current requirements and recommendations of the two institutions have been implemented in the new remote control unit. The equipment can also be integrated in future elements of the federal government’s modular alert system.

For more than twenty years now, factory planners at HÖRMANN Rawema have been supporting Bharat Forge, the leading supplier of forged chassis and engine components, in its work relating to forming technology in forging in particular. How are the forging facilities set up? How much work is involved in building services engineering? Which automated process solutions are available? What are the requirements that the measuring equipment needs to meet? Finding answers to these questions is an ongoing process. ‘Above all, Bharat Forge relies on the expertise that stems from our wealth of experience, and we work together on efficient solutions to problems in areas ranging from system designs to product implementation,’ said Benjamin Bielefeld, innovation manager at HÖRMANN Rawema.

French postal service company La Poste contracted the Beumer Group to deliver, install and commission two parcel sorting centres near Paris. Beumer engaged Austria-based Klatt Fördertechnik GmbH to supply a complete belt conveyor system for each of these sorting centres. ‘The Beumer Group has been one of our best customers for years, and we have been growing together,’ said Peter Klatt, managing director of Klatt Fördertechnik. He added, ‘The main reasons the Beumer Group has so much faith in us are the reliability of both our conveyor systems and our project management as well as the efficient use of energy, limited servicing requirements and sheer longevity of our equipment, coupled with low life cycle costs.’

The scale of the changes to agriculture over the last hundred years is impressive. At the turn of the 20th century, when Germany was still largely an agrarian society, around 38% of the labour force worked in farming and forestry, and one farmer could feed around four people. Today, that first figure is just 1.8%, and one farmer feeds 135 people on average. ‘This enormous advance in productivity could not have been possible without the use of ever more efficient machinery, and that still applies today,’ said Uwe Jung, managing director of HÖRMANN Automotive in Saarbrücken and St. Wendel. One pivotal factor in production is the forage harvester. First developed in the 1940s, it is one of the most recent items of high-performance agricultural machinery.