Wittmann founder honored in Austria on heels of successful Chinaplas

Werner Wittmann, founder of the global auxiliary and automation supplier of the same name, was honored by the government of Lower Austria for his company's contributions to the province. Wittmann was presented with the Silver Commander's Cross by the governor of the province of Lower Austria, Erwin Pröll, at an award ceremony held in the assembly hall of the Lower Austrian Parliament House in St. Pölten.

Pröll honored Wittmann's achievements on behalf of Wittmann Battenfeld GmbH in Kottingbrunn, and simultaneously on behalf of the Province of Lower Austria. The Wittmann Group acquired its fellow Austrian firm, Battenfeld, in 2008. The governor noted that Wittmann's "courageous entrepreneurial move in taking over Battenfeld GmbH in 2008", resulted in more than 200 jobs being preserved in Kottingbrunn. Since that time, reinvestment in the machinery supplier has enabled it to increase its workforce to just under 400 employees today.

Due to continuing high demand for the newly developed large-machine model, MacroPower, Wittmann has decided to extend the production and warehouse facilities at the Kottingbrunn plant by an additional 3000 sq m.

Wittmann, who had just returned from the Chinaplas show in Shanghai, expressed optimism for the future of Europe as an industrial location in his thank you speech and pointed to the opportunities which the Asian market has in store for innovative companies such as the Wittmann Group.

At Chinaplas, The Wittmann Group displayed a vertical rotary table machine designed as a complete production cell, and a MicroPower machine from the company's PowerSeries presses specially laid out for high-precision injection molding of micro parts. The PowerSeries molded a medical clamp with a part weight of 0.003g from POM supplied by Ticona within a cycle time of 4 seconds. Screw drivers were produced in a 4-cavity mold on a VMR 110/350V vertical rotary table machine with a rotary table 1280 mm in diameter.

Wittmann has a local production facility in Kunshan, China, where various peripherals and robots are manufactured. In operation since 2005, the Kunshan plant

has been has developed into a competence center for automation and peripheral equipment for the Asian market. Production and storage space has been increased and totals 7000 sq m. In 2011, the number of robots produced could be doubled, and the company said its is expecting a further increase in production for 2012.

On the automation side, the company showed various versions of the W818 and W828 robots, including the new robot model W818 with a maximum handling load of 6 kg. In auxiliaries, the Drymax series dryers, Feedmax loaders, Tempro temperature controllers Minor and Junior MAS series of granulators.