Austrotherm

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Austrotherm GmbH

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1953
Seat Wopfing AustriaAustriaAustria 
management Klaus Haberfellner
Number of employees 1030 (2017)
sales 351 million euros (2017)
Branch Building material manufacturer
Website www.austrotherm.com

The Austrotherm GmbH is an Austrian and international manufacturer of insulation products headquartered Wopfing and national sites in Pinkafeld and Purbach in Burgenland . The company was founded in 1953 by Oswald Nowotny in Vienna as Dämmstoffe Nowotny and is now part of Schmid Industrie Holding .

history

In 1953, Oswald Nowotny in Vienna was the first entrepreneur in Austria to start manufacturing Styrofoam. For the time being, he concentrated on the use of expanded polystyrene (EPS) , also called Styrofoam, developed by BASF a year earlier , in the field of decorations , such as B. for mannequins or busts. Having known the excellent thermal insulation properties of EPS for a long time, he set up a production facility for EPS panels in Purbach am Neusiedlersee , which he opened in 1964. This has a total capacity of more than 30,000 m³ per year. After the demand for these insulation boards in Austria increased significantly in the early 1980s, the then managing partner of Wopfinger Stein- und Kalkwerke, Friedrich Schmid, acquired the Nowotny company.

The oil crises of the 1970s caused high price increases for heating fuels. The resulting increase in the demand for insulating materials could then no longer be covered by this production site alone. Schmid then expanded the company in 1982 to include the Pinkafeld production site, which was taken over by the then Wieser company. Together, the company now had a total production capacity of 150,000 m³ per year.

In 1991 Austrotherm Győr was founded in Hungary as a 100% subsidiary of Dämmstoffe Nowotny and has been producing for the Hungarian market since then . The annual production here was at the beginning of 100,000 m³ per year and is constantly being expanded. In the same year, the company began producing extruded polystyrene rigid foam (XPS) at the Pinkafeld site . Up to this point in time, this insulation material was sold in Austria exclusively by the chemical groups BASF and Dow Chemical , which were dominant at the time . Extensive research work and changes to the production facility in Purbach ultimately resulted in the development of the "pink" Thermopan XPS sheet. Insulation materials Nowotny thus became Austria's only XPS manufacturer.

In 1993 Nowotny formed a joint venture with the Polish EPS raw material manufacturer Zaklady Chemiczne Oświęcim and the trading house Ciech-Stomil in Oświęcim and founded the Austrotherm Oświęcim company . The production site near Katowice has an annual production capacity of 200,000 m³.

In 1994 the company Dämmstoffe Nowotny Austria was renamed Austrotherm GmbH in order to ensure a uniform market presence and recognition effect in Europe.

In 1997 the third EPS plant in Eastern Europe went into operation in Bratislava ( Slovakia ) with an annual capacity of 200,000 m³.

In 1999 another joint venture was established with the Korean foam film producer Joongbo Chemical Ind. Co. Ltd. and the subsidiary Korplast PE-Produktions- und VertriebsgmbH with headquarters in Pinkafeld was founded. Austrotherm holds a majority stake of 51% in this. The company produces foam films as protective material in packaging, as well as impact sound and thermal insulation in construction. In September of the same year, full production operations began at the newly built EPS plant in Bucharest ( Romania ). This is designed for an annual capacity of 400,000 m³ and employs 20 people. The second Polish EPS plant was also built in Skierniewice .

In 2001, the former joint ventures Austrotherm Polska and Korplast were taken over 100% and the second Hungarian EPS panel plant was put into operation in Gyöngyös . It is now the most modern and most powerful plant in the entire group, with an annual capacity of 600,000 m³ EPS.

In August 2003, the new EPS plant was opened in Valjevo , Serbia, 80 km south of Belgrade. It stands on an area of ​​12,000 m², is designed for an annual capacity of 400,000 m³ and, in the final stage, 40 employees.

In 2004 a new EPS plant was built in Sofia with an annual capacity of 400,000 m³, thus also serving the Bulgarian market.

Between 2005 and 2006, further plants and sales companies were set up in Serbia , Durres ( Albania ) and Horia / Banat (Romania). The latter now also guarantees the export of the EPS panels to Ukraine and Moldova .

In 2008 another plant was opened in Ajtos (Bulgaria) with an annual capacity of 400,000 m³. In the fall of 2008, the company's first plant in Asia started full production near Istanbul .

In 2013 the subsidiary Austrotherm Dämmstoffe GmbH was founded in Germany. The XPS plant in Wittenberge was opened in June 2014.

In 2016, Austrotherm acquired a stake in Isobasalt, a company that wanted to build a stone wool insulation plant in Großwilfersdorf . Since the new production process could not be made ready for production, the company was closed in March 2019.

In August 2020, the investment of 3.5 million euros in the construction of a factory with 15 jobs in Nis , in the south of Serbia, is reported. Research and development takes place in Burgenland.

Foreign companies

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reorganization at Baumit and Austrotherm , Austrotherm press release, December 2019.
  2. ↑ a b Austrotherm Group 2017 with record sales , Austrotherm press release, March 2018.
  3. ↑ Austrotherm opens insulation material factory , DachWand, 7 July 2014.
  4. ↑ Millions invested for a new insulation plant in Eastern Styria ( Memento from June 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) in the Wirtschaftsblatt from June 13, 2016, accessed on June 13, 2016.
  5. ↑ Isobasalt website ( Memento from July 31, 2019 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Austrotherm expands in Serbia orf.at, August 17, 2020, accessed August 17, 2020.