Officials at the Brückner Group (Siegsdorf, Germany), made up of tenter frame and cast polypropylene (CPP) equipment producer Brückner Maschinenbau, service affiliate Brückner Servtec, and thermoforming machinery manufacturer Kiefel, say they have the money and the will to make acquisitions that will allow the company to offer a wider range of products in the future to help overcome some of the cyclical nature of its main business areas.

Axel von Wiedersperg, CEO, says the company, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, has its eye on a number of strategic expansion prospects, in comments he made during a pre-K 2010 press conference late last week. Under the company's plan, called Vision 2015, he expects two or three acquisitions to be made in the next five years. He says the company has the funds to finance such moves.

The company, which in 2007 took over the Kiefel group including thermoforming and blown film equipment manufacturing, sees this planned expansion as the first move. When asked by MPW why blown-film equipment, which was sold to Reifenhäuser (Troisdorf, Germany) in August last year, didn't fit into this plan, CFO Maximilian Schneider said that the blown-film equipment sector is both very competitive and in flux. Brückner knew at the time it would have to either invest heavily into the blown-film side to expand its base, or look for further acquisitions/partners in the same sector to merge with Kiefel Extrusion. "When the Kiefel group was up for sale the previous owner was only interested in selling the entire company, not separate divisions," Schneider says. He admits that at the time Brückner was really only interested in acquiring the thermoforming division, located in nearby Freilassing, which also offered some synergies between the two manufacturing sites.

He says when Reifenhäuser expressed interest in the blown-film division, both Brückner and Reifenhäuser explored various possibilities including cooperation, joint venture, and other models before deciding to sell outright Kiefel Extrusion to Reifenhäuser.

Brückner saw a big break in orders occurring in 2009 for its three divisions and net sales in that year were €203 million compared to €388 million in record year 2007. This last figure however includes sales of its Kiefel Extrusion blown-film lines, which were no longer included in the 2009 tallies. Schneider predicts the three divisions will generate a total of €325 million net sales this year on an expected 395 orders. He says from the present order interest, 2011 should be even better.

He admitted that neither Brückner nor its competitors sold a single tenter frame line for biorienting film in Europe last year. Main demand for Brückner tenter frame units is still coming for commodity products for packaging from China. However, demand for smaller, more flexible lines for specialty films for photovoltaic modules, optical films, separators for lithium-ion batteries, function films with special barrier layers, and biodegradable web is coming from other geographic areas, he says. —[email protected]