You opened the new distri­b­u­tion center in Hollen­bach in May 2017. But ebm-papst is pushing on with other construc­tion projects. What are you working on now?

There are many projects. We held the dedi­ca­tion cere­mony for the second phase of the exten­sion in St. Georgen in September. We had ground­breaking cere­monies for an exten­sion in Herbolzheim and for a completely new building in Lauf. In Mulfingen, we’ll begin construc­tion of a new devel­op­ment center with floor space of 18,500 square meters in the third quarter of 2018.

And what’s happening at the loca­tions around the world?

A factory expan­sion was just completed in the Czech Republic, and we recently opened a new plant in Serbia. We’re expanding our site in Tapolca, Hungary, and we’ll be opening a new plant in the coming year in Romania. In October we decided to build a new plant in China, which should start produc­tion in early 2019.

Do any projects have priority?

We push these projects according to the needs of our busi­ness. We have so much construc­tion in progress now because we’re working near our capacity limits at almost all of our sites.

How much of a role do energy effi­ciency and resource conser­va­tion play in construc­tion world­wide?

We always take those into account. For us, it goes without saying that we should be able to operate a building as econom­i­cally as possible. The situ­a­tion at each site deter­mines what tech­nology ends up being used. For example, an ice reser­voir like we built in St. Georgen isn’t possible every­where, but LED lighting in all new build­ings is.

What is ebm-papst’s objec­tive with the projects?

Construc­tion is an impor­tant compo­nent of our growth strategy. Our main aim is to develop capacity to meet our needs. By posi­tioning ourselves for growth, we can better support our customers in their devel­op­ment. And by glob­al­izing our produc­tion network, we get closer to our customers. In addi­tion to expanding capacity, that’s a main consid­er­a­tion behind our construc­tion activity. It helps us to offer our customers much better service.