Mr Brandl, let’s start by looking back at the 2016/17 busi­ness year. How would you sum it up?

The sales figures make extremely posi­tive reading! 1.9 billion euros repre­sents a record result for our company. Compared to the previous year we achieved a growth rate of 13 per cent. Even leaving out our acqui­si­tion of the elec­tronics specialist IKOR we are still well above the market average. Such success would not have been possible without the confi­dence shown by our customers.

How are you plan­ning to main­tain this momentum?

By contin­uing to get even better. The new distri­b­u­tion center that we opened in May in Hollen­bach for instance repre­sents a major improve­ment for our customers. Here, the latest tech­nology and an area of 38,000 square meters enable us to ship our prod­ucts around the world more quickly (page 34). With further building projects at our sites in Lauf, Mulfingen, St. Georgen and Herbolzheim we are reacting to changes in customer require­ments. On top of that we are also exploring new ways of devel­oping a greater capacity for inno­va­tion. Our sense is that the topic digi­ti­za­tion is gaining enor­mously in signif­i­cance for our customers. Which is why, following on from the site in Osnabrück, we are opening a second start-up offshoot ebm-papst neo in Dort­mund to research into new solu­tions for connec­tivity and the like.

In the spring you urged your work­force to commit them­selves to the “one ebm-papst” corpo­rate strategy. How does that relate to these devel­op­ments?

The guiding prin­ciple behind “one ebm-papst” is to consol­i­date our strengths still further. With a clear objec­tive: To become an even better partner for our customers. We are currently involved in a lot of projects, all ulti­mately aimed at accel­er­ating our oper­a­tions and enhancing effi­ciency. The concrete expres­sion of that will be a shorter time-to-market. We discover such poten­tial areas for improve­ment by talking to our customers. And that helps us to remain the ebm-papst they have come to appre­ciate. Just that we are even better.