According to Gudrun Schröder, managing director of Reka Wellpappenwerke, "the upgrading that is now required to the Lohhof site represents a big financial challenge for a medium-sized company like us. Through our decision to place this site in the hands of a big, internationally-operating family business in our sector, we have both secured jobs in the region over the long term and also guaranteed the reliable service provision to our existing customer base. It also enables us to focus fully on the development of our Kitzingen site through further investments to expand our good, regional position."
Mathias Schliep, CEO of Thimm Group, noted that "geographically, the Lohhof plant is the perfect complement to our production network. We already supply many customers in Bavaria from our existing corrugated cardboard plants in Germany and the Czech Republic. In addition, customer proximity is becoming increasingly important both due to sustainability reasons and ever rising logistics costs."
Thimm's objective is to further expand its own market presence in southern Germany and to fully develop the Bavarian market, with the next step being its planned construction of a next-generation corrugated cardboard plant that will replace the Lohhof plant in the medium term.
"Negotiations on the purchase of a site north of Munich are at an advanced stage. We are already working on the plant layout. We want to start construction within the next two years with a production start date scheduled for 2016," Schliep added.
The new factory will consolidate the company's production for southern Germany and the adjacent export markets. "Now that over the last few years we have continuously modernized and expanded our corrugated cardboard plants in Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania, the new factory in Bavaria is a further strategic component of the further sustainable development of our national and international business," explained Schliep.
Thimm Verpackung is the biggest business division of the Thimm Group. Founded in 1949, Thimm is a family-owned business and one of the leading system suppliers of corrugated cardboard transportation and sales packaging, sales displays, multi-material packaging, and packaging-related services in the European market. It has some 2,350 employees at 16 sites in Germany, Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, and Austria, and generates annual revenues of about EUR 450 million.
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