Laser maker Trumpf has recorded €2.72 billion in sales for its 2014/15 fiscal year, ending 30 June. This was a 5 per cent increase on the previous year, despite the sale of the company’s Medical Technology division in August 2014.
In an annual comparison adjusted for the Medical Technology factor, revenues increased by 12.6 per cent.
Trumpf has recently opened an R&D subsidiary for laser diode technology as well as investing €70 million in a facility to house its laser technology for extreme ultraviolet lithography. The company has established a new additive manufactuing division at its headquarters in Ditzingen and is releasing 3D printing technology at the Formnext trade fair in Frankfurt from 17 to 20 November. The additive technology was derived from a joint venture with Italian laser system maker, Sisma.
In addition, Trumpf is investing in Industry 4.0 and the manufacturing of the future. It has founded an IT company, Axoom, which will provide a connectivity platform for manufacturing environments. ‘For us it is clear that we won't be leaving the smart factory to third parties, but will be taking the production connectivity into our own hands,’ commented Trumpf president Dr Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller.
Axoom, based in Karlsruhe, Germany, currently has 22 employees. It is developing an operating system with preinstalled apps for production environments. The vendor-neutral platform enables reliable data transportation as well as data storage and analysis. At the same time, it offers solution modules for order processing within a production operation.
‘With Axoom we're establishing an entirely new business model. We're offering all customers with industrial production processes the chance to organise those processes into one single system, all by themselves,’ added Leibinger-Kammüller.
The financial figures showed a shift in regional sales distribution for the company. Germany remained the largest single market, but it declined slightly. China became Trumpf's largest foreign market for the first time, switching places with the United States. The company registered good gains in Western Europe, especially in France and Italy.
‘In the final analysis, our strategy of growth through innovation, regional diversification and targeted acquisitions in our core business has been a successful one,’ said Leibinger-Kammüller.
The overall number of employees – 10,873 as of 30 June – remained at the level of the previous year. The research and development ratio in relation to sales stood at 9.8 per cent.
For the current fiscal year, Leibinger-Kammüller was cautiously optimistic. She said that the various geopolitical uncertainties and also the slowdown of growth in China meant that forecasts could only be vague. Overall, she hoped that the level of the previous fiscal year could be maintained, adding that single-digit growth was possible across the Trumpf Group.
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