RAMPF Ecosystems GmbH & Co. KG Innovative recycling polyols and
plant systems

RAMPF Group: “We had a great financial year”

At the RAMPF Group’s annual press conference held at the company headquarters in Grafenberg last week, Michael Rampf, CEO of RAMPF Holding, reflected on the figures for the 2010/2011 financial year, which proved to be the most successful since RAMPF's foundation in 1980. He also touched upon the Group's recent investments, past and future highlights and personnel developments.

Based in Grafenberg, Germany, and with a current workforce of around 470, the RAMPF Group is one of the market leaders in reactive casting resins and machine systems. 

The RAMPF Group is a typical German family-run SME with an innovative and sustainable company philosophy. The annual press conference focused primarily on sales trends, the growth in international business, and investments in site expansion and new product groups. Main discussion points included the strength of international business and the growing demand from the machine tool industry for EPUCRET machine beds.

Sales
Michael Rampf greeted the members of the press by saying, “2010/2011 was a great financial year for us, so it's a very pleasant task holding this year's annual press conference”. Consolidated figures to June 30, 2010 are expected to be EUR 104.5 million. This represents growth in sales of 46 percent compared to the figures for 2009/2010 and is up around 15 percent on our previous peak year in 2007/2008.
National sales in the financial year just closed amounted to EUR 41.4 million, with international sales significantly higher at EUR 61.3 million. “The international markets are hugely important for us, with international business accounting for around 60 percent of our total sales,” said Michael Rampf.  Having built up RAMPF Group, Inc. in Wixom, Michigan/USA, in 2003-2004, Michael Rampf is very familiar with the business there, saying: “In the United States in particular, we recorded strong growth during the crisis”. The U.S. site offers the entire product and service portfolio of RAMPF Giessharze, RAMPF Dosiertechnik and RAMPF Tooling. The company set up its own liquid resin production facility in 2008. The decision five years ago to establish a branch in Osaka in the south-west of Japan has also been a resounding success. Generating sales of EUR 4.5 million, it is now one of the leading suppliers of modeling materials in Japan. RAMPF Group Japan also recently started selling machine beds made of mineral casting, which are produced by RAMPF (Taicang) Co. Ltd. for the Asian market. The Chinese branch of the RAMPF Group was founded in 2007.

Sales trends
There are a number of reasons for the 46 percent rise in sales compared to the previous year. The economic climate in general helped improve the real economy, while projects that RAMPF initiated during the crisis, such as new services and products, also paid excellent dividends. The internationalization strategy of the RAMPF Group, which was started eight years ago, also made an important contribution to growth. Michael Rampf also spoke about the financial crisis. “As RAMPF has a broad customer base, our areas of business were hit by the crisis at different times. EPUCRET was the first company to be affected by the crisis and had to switch to short-time work while the employees of RAMPF Dosiertechnik were working to full capacity.” Despite recording a decline in sales in both 2008/2009 and 2009/2010, RAMPF only once posted a negative result. “We survived the crisis in good shape,” said Michael Rampf with pride. Successful crisis management, he said, was down to a sound cost-cutting program, a freeze on investments that did now however dismiss projects already in the planning stage, and a solidarity package agreed with the employees. The Group's solidarity package involved a 5-10 percent pay cut for employees for a period of around 10 months, without a reduction in the number of working hours. A further strategic measure during the crisis was the sale of RAMPF Automation effective as of January 1, 2010.

Customers
Key areas of business for the RAMPF Group include the automotive industry and its suppliers, the machine tool industry, the electrical and electronics industry, the construction industry, and new energies in the photovoltaic and wind power sectors. RAMPF products are also gaining in popularity in other sectors, including the medical technology, filter, household appliance, furniture and measurement technology industries. The Group attaches great importance to close cooperation with customers. Technology partnerships are particularly important for RAMPF, as shown by the symposium of RAMPF Giessharze in June 2011. Focusing on “intelligent plastics solutions of the future”, the plastics specialist showed how polyurethane, epoxy and silicon can help solve future problems. High-profile speakers from Festo, Daimler, KUKA and BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte talked about sustainability, innova-tion and networking. “We welcomed around 100 guests to Grafenberg. The event provided the perfect opportunity to found new partnerships and allowed us to use existing technology partnerships to showcase the versatility of our materials.”
EPUCRET's biggest customer is the Gildemeister Group, the world's largest machine tool manufacturer.

Investments
As a result of the economic crisis, the RAMPF Group invested EUR 2.9 million in the financial year just closed.  The companies are equipped with state-of-the-art production facilities for manufacturing and processing reaction resins. In financial year 2011/2012, RAMPF plans to invest around EUR 8 million. Investments will be made to establish silicon production as the third cornerstone of RAMPF Giessharze, to expand the production of “large-volume” models at RAMPF Tooling, and to drive forward the new product groups EPUTRONIC, EPUSTONE and EPUGRIND at EPUCRET.  Plans to establish a new site for RAMPF Group, Inc. are also well under way. RAMPF Dosiertechnik is in the process of expanding the useful area of its site in Zimmern (o.R.) by around 3,500 square meters. The new building is scheduled to open in the spring of 2012 and will create space for a new logistics and service center, bigger application engineering facilities and a contract manufacturing plant.
“EPUCRET Mineralgusstechnik laid the foundation for further developments during the crisis,” explained Michael Rampf. The opening of a new grinding center in Bessenbach, Bavaria, in July 2010, represented an important point in the valueadded chain. As a result, it was possible to partially integrate the precision grinding of machine beds – which is still outsourced to external contract manufacturing companies – into the company's own production chain. This enables EPUCRET to cover the current requirements – from material manufacture and the design and development of machine beds right through to precision grinding. Both mineral-cast and hard stone beds are produced with µm accuracy using grinding and hand lapping before being augmented with drives and controls to produce customized mechatronic positioning and moving systems. 

Biggest individual projects
The biggest projects in the financial year just closed include an edgecasting system for the construction industry, the RAKU-TOOL® MB-0720 modeling board from RAMPF Tooling, and a mixing and dispensing system from RAMPF Dosiertechnik with handling robots and vacuum stations for casting inverters for the photovoltaics industry.

Personnel and training
The headcount of the RAMPF Group grew steadily by 8 percent. At June 30, 2011, RAMPF had 444 employees worldwide, with 388 of these working in Germany. Headcount is expected to increase to 500 in the 2011/2012 financial year.
The RAMPF Group companies provide on-the-job training for their employees. For several years, employees of RAMPF Dosiertechnik have also attended the Baden-Württemberg University of Cooperative Education at the Horb am Neckar campus to study mechatronics and mechanical engineering. The RAMPF Group has a good trainee ratio. This financial year alone will see seven new young people start training at RAMPF, which currently has 21 trainees. RAMPF also offers a number of opportunities for young people to get an insight into many areas of the company through internships and diploma projects. The partnership established between RAMPF and schools in the Grafenberg catchment area of the Erms valley often sees Michael and Matthias Rampf take time out to present the company to school-children and other interested groups. “First and foremost, we want to highlight the opportunity to train as a chemical technician. Last year, we advertised vacancies for three positions in this field,” said Michael Rampf.

Trade fairs
RAMPF showcases its broad-ranging product portfolio at trade fairs in Germany and abroad. In the current financial year, RAMPF will be represented at Composites Europe, Bondexpo, Fakuma and Productronica in Germany as well as at Elecrama in Mumbai/India, Plast India in New Delhi/India, Winfair in Istanbul/Turkey, EP and Chinaplas in Shanghai/China, CEF (China Electronics Fair) in Shenzhen/China and Plast in Milan/Italy.
At the fairs this year, RAMPF will be highlighting its expertise as a system supplier of plastics based on renewable raw materials. “We are also developing our company with a view to sustainability and offering our customers a wide range of options,” said Michael Rampf.

Company philosophy
The owner-run family business looks to put the company philosophy into practice in its day-to-day operations. As part of the innovation drive started in 2008, RAMPF launched a new event series known as “Innovation stars on the red couch”. Guests invited to the red couch have all broken new ground with courageous innovations. The first guest invited to the RAMPF innovation center in Grafenberg as part of this series was sound designer and composer Peter Philippe Weiss. Future guests will include successful figures from the worlds of business, culture and sport. RAMPF uses this discussion platform to encourage interdepartmental and intergenerational collaboration among employees. “Innovations stem from communication, and ideas are an essential ingredient of creativity,” said Michael Rampf

---