Succession for company founders secured — Dornbirn location to be further expanded

Now the Swedish Pro­to­tal Group is tak­ing over the high-tech com­pa­ny 1zu1 in Dorn­birn. This was announced by the two own­ers and man­ag­ing direc­tors Wolf­gang Humml and Hannes Häm­mer­le today, Wednes­day, at a works meet­ing. Pro­to­tal will con­tin­ue to run 1zu1 inde­pen­dent­ly and expand it on an ongo­ing basis. “This is a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for the com­pa­ny and our employ­ees, and a per­fect suc­ces­sion plan for us,” Humml and Häm­mer­le empha­size. They will remain man­ag­ing direc­tors until their retirement.

25 years ago, Wolf­gang Humml and Hannes Häm­mer­le had found­ed their joint com­pa­ny in a shell con­struc­tion. In the mean­time, 1zu1 in Dorn­birn has around 160 employ­ees. The com­pa­ny is one of the lead­ing providers of 3D print­ing, rapid tool­ing and addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing with plas­tics in the Ger­man-speak­ing region.

Wednes­day after­noon, the two founders, each 50 per­cent share­hold­ers and man­ag­ing direc­tors pre­sent­ed the future own­er at a works meet­ing: the Swedish Pro­to­tal Group is tak­ing over 100 per­cent of the high-tech com­pa­ny. The con­tracts have already been signed, and the takeover is expect­ed to take effect on Feb­ru­ary 1, 2022.

Financially strong partner

Pro­to­tal Indus­tries is a major sup­pli­er of 3D print­ing, vac­u­um cast­ing, alu­minum molds and injec­tion mold­ing in North­ern Europe and thus oper­ates in the same areas as 1zu1. The group includes eight com­pa­nies in Swe­den, Nor­way, Eng­land, Den­mark and Italy with a total of around 200 employ­ees. The main own­er is the invest­ment com­pa­ny Nal­ka AB, which is backed by the finan­cial pow­er of Ikea.

“Our vision is to become the mar­ket leader in Europe in addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing with plas­tics for series pro­duc­tion. 1zu1 is a per­fect fit for us. It brings us a big step clos­er to this goal.”

- Jan Löfv­ing, CEO of Pro­to­tal Industries

“The com­pa­ny is already one of the lead­ing providers of addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing with plas­tics in the Ger­man-speak­ing region. We can build on that. We work as a group of inde­pen­dent com­pa­nies, learn from each oth­er’s best prac­tices and take advan­tage of the synergies.”

- Ron­nie Peters­son, Sales & Mar­ket­ing Director

Securing the long term

Hannes Häm­mer­le sees the takeover as “a per­fect suc­ces­sion solu­tion. It secures the com­pa­ny in the long term and opens up great new oppor­tu­ni­ties.” He will be 57 in a few weeks, and busi­ness part­ner Wolf­gang Humml will be 60. Humm­l’s son Chris­t­ian, who holds a man­age­ment posi­tion in the com­pa­ny, sup­ports the solution.

Hannes Häm­mer­le and Wolf­gang Humml will remain man­ag­ing direc­tors. “We will con­tin­ue to sup­port our 1to1 team in the com­ing years,” empha­sizes Humml. Not only will the jobs be retained, Pro­to­tal plans to expand and enlarge the site. The Swedish buy­ers have already signed long-term leas­es with Häm­mer­le and Humml as own­ers of the prop­er­ties. The exist­ing leas­es at Rhomberg’s fac­to­ry will also remain in place and are fixed for the long term. Says Humml, “This is a clear com­mit­ment to a per­ma­nent invest­ment at the site.”

Good partnership

Häm­mer­le and Humml see the Pro­to­tal Group as an excel­lent com­ple­ment to their exist­ing com­pa­ny: “Finan­cial­ly strong, high­ly inno­v­a­tive, and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly at the fore­front,” is how Wolf­gang Humml describes the new part­ners. Häm­mer­le is look­ing for­ward to sup­ple­ment­ing the range of prod­ucts for its own cus­tomers with pro­duc­tion process­es and mate­ri­als from the Group. At the same time, it offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­ply its own prod­ucts to the Group’s companies.