The performance forecast for the German road building and quarrying equipment manufacturer – a slight rise on 2011 net sales of €1.76 billion – was revealed as Jürgen and brother and co-Wirtgen Group president, Stefan Wirtgen, told a press conference at the recent Wirtgen Mineral Technology Days event about the company’s sales push in emerging markets.
Wirtgen owns the
“The markets in the last few years have shifted - emerging markets are playing an increasingly important role, and growth markets are taking up a larger share of our total sales,” said Stefan Wirtgen. “We have entered major emerging markets and are now rapidly expanding in these locations.”
Stefan Wirtgen highlighted how Wirtgen had opened a factory in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which produces mixing plants for road construction under the
Meanwhile at Langfang, near Beijing, China, Wirtgen has created a base including an assembly plant, a sales and service centre and a parts warehouse. The locally produced range includes Wirtgen cold milling machines, Vögele road pavers and Hamm rollers.
Stefan Wirtgen said the company had invested €40 million in the China site, which he described as a “very sophisticated new facility”.
He added: “A current project is to produce a paver locally in India. Production of this product will need a bit of time as we have to extend the factory [in Pune]. We are working on the design of this paver. Maybe in the first or second quarter of 2013, we can start production.”
Despite Wirtgen’s ambitions to expand Wirtgen machine sales in emerging market, Stefan Wirtgen stressed that this would not lead to the company neglecting its traditionally strong western markets.
“We are a family-owned company and our tradition is very much investing in the future,” added Stefan Wirtgen. “We have invested an average of €75.1 million annually in the company since 2001. One of our major areas of investment has been in our German factories. We have expanded the Windhagen factory for the assembly of specialist products, reconstructed the Vögele factory [in Ludwigshafen], and there’s a completely new factory at Kleemann [Göppingen].”
More than 1,400 mining specialist and quarry operators from more than 60 countries attended the Wirtgen Mineral Technology Days, at the company’s Windhagen headquarters in Germany from September 13 to 14, 2012.
