Good business development at Dieffenbacher - Machinery and plant manufacturer sees improved earnings in 2017 and good order intake in 2018

Compared to the previous year, Dieffenbacher GmbH Maschinen- und Anlagenbau from Eppingen closed the 2017 financial year with significantly  improved earnings. The equity ratio of the family-owned company is currently 31%. The goal is to increase it to 35% by 2020.

The three Business Units of Wood, Composites and Recycling are enjoying full order books. Based on the successful start to 2018, Dieffenbacher expects a further increase in overall performance for the complete financial year.

In the first four months of 2018, the Wood Business Unit received 10 new plant orders, four of which were awarded to Dieffenbacher's Shanghai Wood-Based Panel Machinery (Dieffenbacher SWPM) site and six to its German headquarters. Two of these orders are for OSB plants, enabling Dieffenbacher to further expand its leading position in this product. The company now has 19 OSB references with continuous presses, eight of which have a press length of over 50 m.

Two additional orders were received in early 2018 for the processing of alternative raw materials. Two plants for the production of particleboard from rice straw were sold in China. For Dieffenbacher, these were orders number five and six for plants of this type. Having already supplied 100 continuous wood-based panel plants to China in conjunction with Dieffenbacher SWPM, Dieffenbacher is the clear market leader in the world's most populous country.

In the category of individual machines, the CPS+ continuous press and the knife ring flakers of Dieffenbacher's Bielefeld-based subsidiary B. Maier Zerkleinerungstechnik GmbH stand out. Since the beginning of the year, Maier has received 20 orders for knife ring flakers, with some of those orders including FlowOptimizer. Dieffenbacher has sold five new CPS+ presses in 2018. In total, 20 units were sold in three years after the introduction at Ligna 2015. As the gold standard for efficient continuous press systems, the CPS+ has exceeded both customers’ and internal expectations.

In the wood recycling sector, the latest order is from Nolte Holzwerkstoffe GmbH & Co. KG in Germersheim. A state-of-the-art Dieffenbacher waste wood processing plant is to be built there by mid-2019. A plant with a very similar processing concept began operating at Pfleiderer in Neumarkt in January. New and further developments in the areas of foreign objects’ detection and screening enable these recycling systems to achieve purity levels of over 99%.

The Composites Business Unit has also further expanded its leading position in the market for turnkey production lines for glass and carbon fiber-reinforced lightweight components. Positive experiences with Dieffenbacher's solutions for the automotive industry have also prompted satisfied customers to place follow-up orders. Since the beginning of 2018, Dieffenbacher has received eight orders for presses with pressing forces of 2,000 to 3,000 t. Four of these will include complete line automation and, thanks to smart networking, meet all Industry 4.0 requirements.