Realignment accompanied by investments in R&D

Kreuzwertheim, February 21, 2020

The Kurtz Ersa Corporation informed about various changes in a regional press release last week. Overall, the group closed with almost € 270 million in sales at roughly the previous year's level. Given the diverse uncertainties in the market, the Group management is satisfied with the earnings situation. There were utilization issues in the molding machines area due to a reluctance to invest, particularly in the automotive area. This is a key market segment for our molding machines for aluminum die casting and trimming press. Out of the approximately 1,200 employees in the Wertheim region of Germany, 20 jobs will be cut in the future. Kurtz Ersa would also like to divest itself from the large parts processing area in the long term, which will affect around 70 jobs. A focus of the company is to concentrate on the core businesses of engineering and assembly as well as international sales and service. As a result of this focus, Kurtz Ersa will consider offers from outside entities for this machining center, which can be operated as a stand-alone business. The manufacturing capacities were expanded significantly in 2019 in both China and Germany. The company focuses on the established markets in particle foam processing, foundry machine construction, electronics production and, more recently, increasingly on the automation of production processes. To this end, many new jobs in the field of image processing and robot programming have been created in the past two years.

The steamless radio frequency technology presented last year currently plays a dominant role in new developments at Kurtz Ersa. This makes it possible to make particle foam processing more environmentally friendly and energy efficient, and to achieve energy savings of up to 90 percent! Completely new materials are also currently in process development and Kurtz Ersa is very confident that they will soon be able to present new products for completely new markets. They will continue to analyze customer segments and organize sales and support staff into the market segments consisting of automotive and protective solutions. All new applications will be bundled in the Future Business area. CEO Rainer Kurtz says confidently: "Kurtz Ersa accepts the challenges of the current economic situation and the special situation in the plastics industry and will continue to be a reliable and sustainable partner for its customers."