Machines worth 10 Million € already ordered

02.11.2015

Only an early onset of winter can stop the reconstruction in Immenstadt. Otherwise everything is running as planned.

The clock is ticking and Johann Amoser consistently looks into the sky with anxiety these days: "Hopefully the weather will keep up, too early snow fall would be fatal", says the managing director of monta Klebebandwerk in Immenstadt. Because, the new production hall has to be finished and the production in the new hall needs to be running until April 11th next year. This year on April 11th a major fire in the monta facilities destroyed the production hall of the slitting department including a storage building. In the following months the 130 employees feared for their work places. Now, there is a good mood in the plant at the foot of the mountain "Mittag" again. It definitely will go on. Nonetheless, the suspense continues until April.

The company took out a business interruption insurance with a coverage of up to one year. So outages will be compensated up to maximum April 11th 2016. Up to now, the construction of the new production hall is running as planned: 102 meters long, 22,5 meters wide and 2 floors high above the old concrete basement, that survived the fire well. The steel frame is almost done, currently the concreate precast elements at the walls are inserted. However, the crucial point is that the roof is put on the building before the onset of winter. Otherwise, the interior work cannot be started.

The main furnishing in the hall are the new high-performance slitting machines from Italy. Seven units with a value of each ten million Euro shall be delivered next year on 21 trucks. The slitting machines have a lead time of nine months, each machine has a weight of 12 tons. The full-automatic units also contain robots that subsequently pack the finished adhesive tape rolls into cartons.

"We see light at the end of the tunnel again", is how Amoser explains the mood in the plant. The full stock is what saved the company in the time after the fire. "Thereby we could keep supplying our customers." The crucial factor was "not to lose the market", says the monta-managing director. Therefore, they let the semi-finished products (film-rolls coated with adhesive with a width of 1,8 meters) be cut externally in the beginning. Amoser even bought in finished products from the competition in order to be able to keep providing his customers: "Hereby we managed to keep our customer base."

After the hall of the coating department, that was completely covered with soot, was cleaned thoroughly screw by screw, the machines have been running again six days per week since the middle of the year. In the same time, the slitting department was put into operation again with two leased slitting machines. Currently, on these two machines, orders from national and international customers are being processed in a three-shift-operation, 6 days per week. According to Amoser, in the meantime the company already reached four fifths of the former turnover again: "This way we could maintain the jobs for all 130 employees."

Many contributed to the success

According to Amoser the reason that the restart could be achieved so well was a success of the politics and the public authorities – the city council and the district office. Furthermore, he is also very grateful for the patience of the neighbors. They had to endure a considerable amount of noise and dirt the last months. Now the managing director is only hoping for the weather to stay stable.