Austria Email
A sunny future ahead for Austria Email
Austria Email is a name created by connection to the special surface treatment process of Enameling by material of ‘Email’.
Its principal activity is the manufacture and provision of water heating systems, including a range of products from small electric hot-water storage tanks to large tanks and electric space heating units. The company is also active in the field of renewable-energy technology, providing complete solar energy installations, as well as individual components such as solar collectors, solar accumulators and accumulators for space heating systems on a partly solar basis. In addition, Austria Email’s product range includes special units for industrial water treatment and heating, as well as accumulators for district-heating systems.
Austria Email is the only manufacturer of enameled warm water heaters in the Austria region. The company has one manufacturing plant in Knittelfeld, which is 40,000 sq m in size and employs approximately 400 employees. In addition to this, Austria Email works in partnership with a number of other clients throughout Europe.
The company’s high quality standards are monitored by the ISO 9001 certification.
Werner Kohlhuber, chief executive officer for Austria Email explains: “We manufacture and supply very high quality products to our customers. We also provide a number of special solutions, which are tailored to our clients’ needs. Our production processes are very flexible so we can deal with all kinds of different products, which the end-user may require. We also have our own aftersales services, which deal with any issues our customers may have after they have received the final product.”
He continues: “Over time Austria Email has developed a very good reputation within the industry as a reliable working partner. If you talk to people in Austria about our company you receive excellent feedback – this is one of the key contributing factors towards our success.”
Aiming to continually be at the forefront of technological development, the company invests significantly in the expansion and improvement of its product range. Werner adds: “Research and development is extremely important to the company and we are always looking for innovative ideas for new products and services. There are R&D projects running all the time in order to ensure we are meeting our clients’ needs. One of the major areas we are currently looking into is producing systems, which use alternative energy sources, such as solar power. This is a long-term development for us, which we hope will be completed by the end of 2010.“
Solar power is becoming increasingly popular as one of the best environmentally friendly forms of energy power and with a large emphasis on reducing pollution more customers are looking into these alternative energy systems. The Sun is 150 million km away, and amazingly powerful. In fact, every minute, enough energy arrives at the Earth to meet our demands for a whole year. With such power available, there are many advantages of using solar energy including the fact that it is pollution free during use. Therefore, by investing in this technology Austria Email is contributing towards the worldwide goal of reducing global warming.
Although the company is already active in the field of renewable-energy technology, it does not manufacture these systems. Working in partnership with similar companies within the industry, Austria Email buys solar energy systems from its suppliers and then sells them onto its customers. With investment into this technology the company is securing its future within the energy systems market. The organisation’s goal now is to become more involved with the development of these systems to ensure its customer needs are being met.
“One of the biggest challenges we will be facing in the future when looking at renewable-energy technology is the increased cost of raw materials. Steel prices especially have risen very quickly during the last couple of years, which means our costs are also increasing. It is very difficult for us to pass this cost onto our customers, therefore for us to remain competitive we have to keep the quality of our products to the highest standards,” Werner comments.
“In addition to this, our manufacturing processes are extremely efficient – we are always ready to supply our products to our customers whenever they need them. If we receive a request for a tailormade boiler we are able to work this into the production process due to our flexibility. The end customer will then receive their product within four and six weeks.”
Looking to the future, Austria Email has plans to expand by at least 20 per cent over the next three to five years. To achieve this growth, the company aims to expand into the European market even further and target new countries such as Russia. Through its excellent service such as tailor-made customer solutions and the best availability based on a customer oriented product range, the company believes it will be able to obtain this growth, whilst continually serving its existing customer base.