Congress Successfully Completed

At the end of the three days, the head of the Baumit conference in 2016, Heike von Meeresfeld, was extremely satisfied with the course of the event, which attracted over 1,300 visitors, including over 200 specialist painting companies, to the freshly snowed Oberstdorf in mid-January. Martin Mansel As usual, the program of the Allgäu building trade congress, which took place for the 12th time this year, was top-class. The audience was particularly impressed by the mixture of overarching topics on the one hand and lectures oriented very closely to building practice on the other. The lectures by Christian Gansch and Ulrich Wickert are certainly highlights. In his lecture entitled "From Solo to Symphony", conductor Christian Gansch explained what companies can learn from orchestras. His personal conclusion: perception,Deciding and acting must interlock as a triad. Together with the audience, Ulrich Wickert took a look behind the scenes of “dams are worthwhile” and presented ways in which companies can use the campaign for their own customer acquisition. The lectures given by Baumit professionals Kay Beyen and Constance Brade on the topics of "Current developments in ETICS systems" and "Refurbishment with historic plasters" were also well attended. Sales focus shifted Heiko Werf and Albert Füß, the managing directors of Baumit Germany, informed in Oberstdorf about the company's activities and also presented their assessment of the market development in 2016. As Heiko Werf said at the press conference on the evening before the event,you are largely satisfied with the course of business in the past year 2015, even if you had to accept losses in the thermal insulation area. However, this could be offset by activities in other areas. Albert Füß: “Due to our traditional plastering expertise, in conjunction with the good construction industry, the drop in sales at ETICS was well offset by sales shifts towards plasters and plaster systems. Thanks to the positive and stable construction industry and growth rates in the apartment building sector, we are achieving our earnings target,”added Füß. In total, the company with its 500 employees has approximately in the past year. 180 million euros generated. Potential in new construction and renovation Baumit continues to see positive prospects for 2016 in the new construction sector. In existing buildings and renovations, growth rates are expected. Heiko Werf: “We will renovate living space that we would not have renovated without the current requirements. This is the only way to provide enough living space.”Werf still considers the total annual new building volume to be too low. Werf and Füß continue to see a bottleneck in the limited capacities of the building contractors. Baumit starts up two new plants this year. One of them is located in Wittenborn, north of Hamburg, the other is a system from the Baumit subsidiary Grabo-Mix. The two managing directors see the company as positioned so that sales activities in northern Germany can be strengthened. Incidentally, the Wittenborn plant is the company's tenth location in Germany. There are also investments in southern Germany. In Landsberg am Lech, an existing plant is being expanded to include a production line for special products and a packing system for small quantities. This will enable pack sizes of up to 1.5 kilograms to be filled. Simplicity as an opportunity “We Germans often tend to over-regulate. We therefore consider the topic of simplicity to be an increasingly important task in the future. We therefore dealt intensively with the questions of how we can simplify products and product descriptions.”With these words, Heiko Werf led to the next topic. Helmut Battschneider, Head of Sales, presented the activities in this area. He cited the new product catalog as an example. This has been given a new structure. The individual chapters can be found more easily by punching the register in the sections. The color scheme has also been changed to make it easier to find the different product worlds. There will be three main categories in the future: the term facade stands for the outside area (blue), space for the inside area (red) and structural work / landscaping (green). The order is also adjusted and leads the reader from the visible level, i.e. from the facade color, inwards to the lower processing layers to the surface preparation. In future, this new color scheme will also be reflected in the design of the containers. Conclusion Baumit made targeted investments in 2015 to simplify the product range and to develop the location. One of the important topics for the future is “simplicity.” The two managing directors also want this from politics. Complicated legislation should be simplified to make it easier for companies in the construction industry to operate in the market.