With new strategies against the crisis
“Now of all times is the best time to invest.” This was how Michael Roensch, Sales Director of AEMtec GmbH, justified the 100,000 Euros he invested in early October. Based in Berlin-Adlershof the company enlarged its Class 100 clean room to one hundred square metres. Also First Sensor Technology (FST), a maker of high tech pressure sensors local to Adlershof, saw its future in a change of strategy.
The investment made by the company was not only fuelled by the idea of preparing for post crisis times with expanded capacities. Presently employing seventy five staff AEMtec is a production service provider and supplier for the development and production of complex microelectronic devices and systems. Rather, the investment was part of a strategic concept that was developed in collaboration with the sister companies of AEM Technologies Holding AG and that provides inspiration towards medical electronics.
Michael Roensch explained that his company had already initiated intense diversification in 2007, before the crisis, and had “wound down the automotive line dominant at the time.” He went on to say that also the new focus on security based electronics opened up opportunities in medical engineering and that they could combine their own strengths in the miniaturisation of electronics with the future of personalised medicine. Looking back Roensch believed that this was not an easy decision, but was possible only with the consent of the principal partner Ventizz Capital Partners Advisory AG. After admitting that AEMtec had enjoyed an excellent level of incoming orders in the second half of the year Roensch concluded in a nutshell: “We are pretty robust.”
According to FST Managing Director Thomas Diepold, also First Sensor Technology (FST) had introduced restructuring as early as 2008, removing its strong focus on the automotive sector. He went on to explain that new innovative products and custom solutions were making up about 80% of FST’s present turnover on the sectors of process and automation technology, medical engineering, white goods and aerospace: With forty employees today the company was not deliberately pursuing a “cheap provider” line, but instead saw its own strengths, besides innovative product approaches, in customer consultation for integrating pressure sensor chips in their development and qualification processes.
“We want to grow healthily with a sound industrial business,” replied Managing Director Peter Krause when asked to characterise the line, and was pleased that the partners were also joining forces on this course. Krause confirmed that the success testified to the correct choice of course: “Today the crisis leaves us unimpressed.”
Klaus Oberzig
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