Dr. Hans-Peter Sollinger, a member of the Voith GmbH (Germany) Corporate Board of Management and chairman of the Voith Paper Management Board, will leave Voith on July 1, after serving the company for 32 years. The company’s supervisory board and shareholders’ committee have appointed Bertram Staudenmaier as his successor.
Within the Voith Paper Management Board, Staudenmaier was previously responsible for the Business Lines Fabric & Roll Systems and Products & Services businesses and is also a member of the Voith Corporate Board of Management. By introducing this generational change now, Voith Paper said it is ensuring continuity over the next decade.
In recent years, Dr. Sollinger had pressed ahead with a comprehensive restructuring program to align the division to the structural decline in the market for graphic paper machines and the growing market demand from Asia for mid-sized paper machines. "Following a very intensive realignment phase, the course set at Voith Paper is now such that I am able to hand over responsibility for the paper segment at Voith. After 32 years with the company, 14 of them as a member of Voith’s Corporate Board of Management, and at the age of 61, it is now the right time for me personally and professionally to hand over the reins to a younger successor who can provide the necessary continuity to lead the division into the next decade," Dr. Sollinger said.
Dr. Sollinger joined Voith in 1982 as a project planning engineer for coating machines. Following various management positions, he assumed responsibility for the paper machines sector in 1994. In the same year, he was appointed a member of the Management Board of Voith Paper. In 2000, Dr. Sollinger joined the Corporate Board of Management of the Voith Group and, since succeeding Hans Müller as chairman of the Management Board of Voith Paper in 2005, has been responsible for the entire paper segment within the Voith Group.
Staudenmaier, the new head of Voith Paper, comes from the Heidenheim region and has spent the better part of his professional life in the paper industry. His career began at Gummiwerke Becker in Heidenheim and took him via various positions, e.g. at BTR/Stowe Woodward AG in Düren and Stowe Woodward North America in Westborough, to the USA, where following the sale of Stowe Woodward operations to the Xerium Group he was responsible for Xerium's entire North American business from 2003. In 2005, Staudenmaier joined Voith as a member of the Corporate Board of Management and assumed responsibility for Voith Paper’s Business Line Fabric & Roll Systems.
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