Ideal reinforcement for KAEFER aerospace division — New jobs planned in Altenburg

KTN Kun­st­stofftech­nik Nob­itz has been sold by bm|t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh to the KAEFER Group from Bre­men. The man­ag­ing direc­tor of bm|t, Dr. Guido Bohnenkamp, and the man­ag­ing direc­tor of the KAEFER Group, Jörn M. Fetköter, signed the sale agree­ment in Erfurt today. Con­fi­den­tial­ity was agreed on the pur­chase price.

“KTN is an ideal match for our grow­ing aero­space divi­sion. This firm’s highly qual­i­fied employ­ees and high qual­ity prod­ucts will extend our range of prod­ucts for the avi­a­tion indus­try “, said Fetköter, on the occa­sion of the con­tract sign­ing, at the same time announc­ing a strength­en­ing of the Altenburg-Nob­itz site. He said that the KAEFER Group had given a far-reach­ing guar­an­tee with regard to jobs and was also plan­ning to take on extra employees.

Fur­ther­more, the KAEFER exec­u­tives are also fore­cast­ing syn­er­gies, for exam­ple in the area of mate­ri­als devel­op­ment. “We are con­stantly work­ing on devel­op­ing new insu­la­tion and fire pro­tec­tion mate­ri­als to con­tribute to increased com­fort and safety. There is still great poten­tial for our firm in this area”, accord­ing to Fetköter.

KTN cur­rently has 199 employ­ees and devel­ops, designs and man­u­fac­tures fibre­glass-rein­forced plas­tic com­po­nents for the air­craft man­u­fac­turer Air­bus. In Nob­itz, they pro­duce air-con­di­tion­ing tubes and side and ceil­ing pan­els, which are then fit­ted in the Air­bus fac­to­ries at Laupheim, Ham­burg-Finken­werder and Toulouse.

“Mean­while KTN can look back on an extremely suc­cess­ful busi­ness devel­op­ment. The firm’s suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment, which began under the man­age­ment of bm|t/TIB, is now to be secured for the long term and expanded by a strate­gic part­ner, the KAE­FER-Group from Bre­men”, com­mented the man­ag­ing direc­tor of bm|t, Dr. Guido Bohnenkamp, on the sale.

KTN was founded in 2001 as a 100 % invest­ment com­pany by the Thüringer Indus­triebeteili­gungs-GmbH & Co. KG (TIB), Erfurt, which today forms part of beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh (bm|t). bm|t is a sub­sidiary of Thüringer Auf­baubank and the man­age­ment com­pany of TIB and three other invest­ment funds. Cur­rently bm|t has hold­ings in a total of 44 com­pa­nies, in which approx­i­mately 60 mil­lion euros have been invested.

The KAEFER Group, Bre­men, is the world’s largest inde­pen­dent com­pany in the area of pro­tec­tion against heat, cold, noise and fire. It is active in 35 coun­tries and cur­rently employs approx­i­mately 8,000 peo­ple. In 2005, group turnover amounted to approx­i­mately 700 mil­lion euros. The core activ­i­ties of this group of firms, which has been fam­ily-owned since 1918, are in the indus­try, off­shore, ship­build­ing, con­struc­tion and aero­space busi­ness areas.

“Avi­a­tion, with its annual growth rates of eight per­cent, is a boom­ing sec­tor and we see excel­lent prospects for us, which is why we took over OLUTEX from Seifhen­ners­dorf in Sax­ony in 2005, and now we have found the ideal add-on in KTN GmbH “, says Fetköter. OLUTEX is Europe‘s lead­ing com­pany in insu­la­tion for the aero­space indus­try and sup­plies insu­la­tion prod­ucts and ser­vices for the entire Air­bus programme.

KTN, OLUTEX and KAEFER Aero­space GmbH, which was founded at the begin­ning of 2006 in Bre­men, now con­sti­tute the aero­space busi­ness area. A work­force of approx­i­mately 440 is employed on the sites in Bre­men, Ham­burg, Toulouse, St. Nazaire, Nob­itz and Seifhen­ners­dorf. Annual turnover is approx­i­mately 40 mil­lion euros. The avowed aim is to fur­ther expand the avi­a­tion busi­ness activ­i­ties. Turnover is expected to dou­ble by the end of the decade. Nob­itz is also set to profit from this growth strategy.