Insight

Founded in 1999, Eurotec GmbH is predominately known as an established distributor of innovative fastening products. However, in 2013 the company introduced manufacturing capabilities for its most popular wood construction screws.

Here Fastener + Fixing Magazine interviews Markus Rensburg, managing director and founder of Eurotec GmbH, to find out more about the company’s manufacturing capabilities and German manufacturing in general.

What differentiates German manufacturing companies from their competitors?
“German companies with the ‘Made in Germany’ seal of quality profit mostly from all-encompassing high-quality standards, thanks to well-trained skilled workers and innovative engineering services. In addition, Germany is at the global vanguard of implementing a sustainable approach to protecting the environment. However, such high environmental standards are not inconsistent with highly successful companies. Also, extensive infrastructure – in tandem with high flexibility – enable fast response times, which is a key factor when supplying customers.”

What differentiates your company and its products specifically?
“We are still a very young company and we are continuing to grow and develop as a business. Currently, we distinguish ourselves with our comprehensive range of building construction products. Among our target groups are those involved in woodworking and roofing, as well as gardening and landscaping. We also serve joiners’ and carpenters’ workshops as well as those working in the area of general interior fittings, such as drywall construction and acoustic structures.

This means that we offer professional users innovative product solutions in areas such as wood construction screws, roofing screws, decking and gardening, and façade insulation systems. Alongside the complete range of fasteners for new builds, solutions for energy related renovation also form part of our portfolio. In this way we place a lot of value on a range of complete system solutions.

Our internal product development is distinguished by an above average proximity to the market. In this way our product managers and development engineers can take a targeted approach to finding the right solution for even complex job specifications. What’s more, our close relationship with customers is enhanced by detailed support for users in the planning phase, as well as during execution for implementing all types of projects. We also offer additional internal and external product training via our in-house application technicians.

As part of our own screw manufacturing, we focus a lot on efficiency. This is achieved thanks to the extraordinarily high-level of automation at our production facilities. For this we use complex machinery that takes on the roles of supplying adjusted wire segments; heading stations for shaping screw heads; pinching machinery for making drill points; thread rolling stations for thread shaping; milling stations for mounting locating grooves; and automated packaging for onward transporting. Thanks to this joining up of what would otherwise be individual process stages, we are able to bypass the need for in-house logistics during the production process and it also leads to shorter production times.”

What is the balance between your company’s domestic and overseas sales?
“Up until now Eurotec has focused mainly on the domestic market and exporting to the European market. In the past two years we have set-up an overseas sales department with the goal of achieving global sales of 10% – 15% of our overall turnover, within the next two years, and we are already seeing initial success. In order to increase our efforts, a marathon session of trade fairs is planned for all areas.”

What have been your successes during 2015? What challenges has your business experienced?
“Eurotec already operates a fully developed programme for timber and decking structures. Alongside the further expansion of our existing strengths in timber structures, we will also focus on building up our product portfolio for concrete fastening, as well as our presence in all markets.

We are currently working intensively on the further development of an ETA for concrete screws. We are expecting our first breakthrough on this in the last quarter of 2015. In addition our range of bolt anchors was launched with an ETA Option 7 approval. We are working on Option 1 approval for this as well. Our production also took receipt of and put into operation second and third machines.

As we continue to grow our product portfolio and our business, it is important that we are conscious that one of the biggest challenges we face is recruiting appropriately qualified and motivated staff.”

www.e-u-r-o-tec.de