GERMANY - With the traditional groundbreaking ceremony, the Weinig Group launched one of the largest construction projects in its recent history at the Nürtingen location. The newly designed headquarters of subsidiary Holz-Her will be built by autumn 2019 for an investment sum of 10 million euros.
The strong growth of the Panel Processing business unit in recent years was the decisive factor for this decision. In addition, the number of employees doubled in the last eight years and the existing structural solution no longer met the increasing requirements. Thus a spacious, modern building complex is now being built in the “Großer Forst” industrial estate on a total area of 5,800 sqm. It provides sufficient capacity to concentrate sales, technology, development, service and administration “under one roof”. The heart of the new building is a 1,400 sqm showroom. A technology center with training rooms and the administration wing will also be located there. During the planning phase, the focus was on the shortest possible routes. In accordance with the basic architectural idea, the new building, measuring 70 x 50 meters, has a continuous floor slab on which the office area and a special hall construction are arranged directly next to each other. Its outstanding stylistic element is a wooden frame that spans the 30-meter wide hall without supports. Visually, the architecture is characterized by a particular lightness. The high strength of the selected composite material plays a significant role in achieving this effect. The so-called “BauBuche” (laminated beech veneer lumber) allows much slimmer components than softwood composites.
An integral part of the concept is the option of subsequent structural modifications without great effort. Future building measures of the Weinig Group will be carried out according to the same CI specifications. 85 employees will move into the new building but the building project is actually designed for as many as 125 employees. Holz-Her thus retains sufficient flexibility to be able to respond to increasing space requirements. The surrounding area also offers space for expansion: In a further expansion stage, an additional area of 1,500 to 2,500 sqm can be developed and built upon in the open field.
“Holz-Her has made a great development since joining the Weinig Group in 2010,” Weinig CEO Wolfgang Pöschl emphasized in Nürtingen. Frank Epple, Managing Director of Holz-Her GmbH, particularly pointed out the potential that the new building opens up: “The functional integration of sales, customer presentations and administration into one building will ensure maximum customer proximity and the highest level of support in the future,” he said. “With the technology and development center, the appropriate infrastructure for an innovative company such as Holz-Her is now finally in place”, he added. Since its integration into the Weinig Group in 2010, Holz-Her has tripled its sales to approximately EUR 120 million in 2017.
