Engel to extend robot plant in Austria

With a capital outlay of some EUR11 million, Austrian machine maker Engel is strengthening its robot production at the Dietach location in Austria. Production, logistics, the apprentice workshop and the office building will be expanded and modernised in two construction phases. Building work starts in May 2023.

This capital expenditure sees the injection moulding machine manufacturer and automation specialist Engel, headquartered in Schwertberg, Austria, respond to the growing global demand for robots and integrated system solutions for injection moulding production.

"We supply well over half of all injection moulding machines produced by Engel with integrated automation technology, and the trend is continuing to grow," as Stefan Engleder, CEO of the Engel Group, emphasises.

Founded in 1980, the Dietach plant today develops and produces three robot series: the viper linear robot, the e-pic pick-and-place robot and the pic A sprue picker. The building is now being extended towards the west direction on the existing plant location. In total, the extension will offer a usable floor space of more than 3,000 sq m.

The flow assembly line will be modernised in the course of the construction work. “In future, Engel will be able to respond in a far more flexible way to customer requests and short-term order changes without prolonging lead times,” says Engleder.

By spring 2024, the production, logistics and apprentice workshop areas will have been completed and the new photovoltaic system will have been put into operation. With the capital expenditure in Dietach, all three Engel production plants in Austria will generate their own green electricity using photovoltaics.

Following the expansion of the production areas, Engel in Dietach will modernise and expand the existing office building from the ground up. It says this will help it establish the basis for further personnel growth in the future. The Dietach location is already looking for mechatronics engineers, commissioning engineers, software engineers, development engineers, and more.

Jörg Fuhrmann took over as Vice President of the Automation and Composite Systems Division at Engel on 1 November 2022. He returned to Engel after having already been employed in the Group as Division Manager Automation Technology at ENGEL Austria and Managing Director of Engel Automatisierungstechnik Deutschland in Germany from 2007 to 2016. During this time, he was responsible for the introduction of the Engel viper and Engel easix product ranges, among other achievements. Jörg Fuhrmann had significantly expanded the business unit after 2007, laying down the foundations for Engel’s Automation Technology.

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