KraussMaffei builds future
22.03.2021 | Katharina Knaut

If a date had to be picked to mark the dawn of a new age at KraussMaffei, September 11, 2020, would be the perfect choice––the day when the foundation stone for the new company headquarters in Parsdorf was laid. “In 10 years, we'll remember this day and say that September 11, 2020 marked the beginning of a new era in KraussMaffei's 182-year history,” says Michael Ruf, CEO KraussMaffei.

But the new headquarters was not the only leap into the future taken by the company. KraussMaffei’s new plant in Jiaxing, China, started operations in March 2020, while the new facility for the company’s subsidiary Bürgsmüller opened in Einbeck in June 2020. And rounding off these major milestones, KraussMaffei’s extrusion operations will relocate from Hanover to Laatzen in 2022.

The construction of these state-of-the-art premises is aimed at safeguarding KraussMaffei’s groundbreaking status into the future, reflecting its motto of “Pioneering Plastics.” “At our other locations in Germany and around the globe, we are committed to shaping the innovative future of KraussMaffei in order to take on and meet the challenges of the 21st century with flying colors,” explains Michael Ruf, CEO KraussMaffei.

The new campus will have an area of 250,000 square meters, the size of 35 soccer pitches. It will house three production halls, a central administration building, four office and employee buildings, a car park, a canteen, a cafeteria, and a 15,000-square-meter Customer Experience Center. The new facility will have a total capacity of 2,500 employees. Production operations will focus on injection molding, reaction injection molding, and automation technology.

The new complex will be designed to maximize workflow efficiency. It will support modern intralogistics that streamline production processes and hone the company’s competitive edge. A core principle is sustainability; the roofs of the complex will house one of Europe’s largest rooftop solar panel systems. The premises will also have a combined heat and power plant, while the buildings will feature LED lighting systems with smart control using lighting and motion sensors.  

The Customer Experience Center will be one of the highlights at the new campus, providing customers with training areas, a handover center for all technologies, and a product and technology avenue as well as a social area and research & development labs.

The first of KraussMaffei’s new locations to be completed is Jiaxing, home to office and production complexes, highly automated warehouse, research, development, and test centers, and a Customer Experience Center. The plant in China’s Zhejiang province commenced operations in March 2020.

Production there spans all forms of injection molding, reaction injection molding, and extrusion technology. Jiaxing’s 58,000 square meters provides space for research and development, design, and production facilities, with a further 37,000 square meters on hand for expansion. Digitalization and other innovations have enabled production capacities to be doubled.

But efficiency is not the only benchmark; sustainability is also a key focus at the new location. A solar power system contributes to Jiaxing’s power needs, while an air-conditioning control system and a smart lighting system have also been installed at the plant.

Process efficiency will be enhanced by the structured layouts of the production areas and intelligent material flows. This will speed up production of extrusion systems and optimize delivery schedules. The heart of the new location is the Customer Experience Center with integrated InnovationCenter, where customers will be able to trial extrusion technology under realistic production-line conditions. 20 different systems will be available. One major focus is technologies used for processing plastic waste into new materials.

This planning allowed Burgsmüller’s manufacture of screw parts, threaded nuts, and trapezoidal spindles destined to supply  KraussMaffei Extrusion in Hanover and external customers to continue without interruption. The new site has an area of 20,300 square meters, twice as large as its predecessor, and will enable production efficiency to be dramatically improved. Work will be simplified by the short distances to cover, automated production cell, and well-designed self-explanatory material flows. With these improvements, the annual production target for screw parts is planned to hit 100,000 by the end of 2025 compared to its present level of 40,000.