The Fine Line: Weighing Excellence
Interview with Martin Schkrobol, Managing Director
Sometimes a company develops as a logical consequence of another’s failure. This was the case with HUZAP GmbH in Hennef, the city of scale manufacturing. After a major player in the market closed down, former employee Martin Schkrobol decided to venture a new start with two partners and to learn from business mistakes. They were successful, and today HUZAP is a major player in the field of packaging technology and plant engineering.
“We took on the region’s expertise in scale construction in 2002 and have now been offering solutions for handling bulk materials for over 20 years,” says Managing Director Martin Schkrobol. “Our machines and complex systems for weighing and filling are used in the plastics, rubber, chemical and food industries.” In addition to HUZAP in Hennef, there is an independent HUZAP company in Poland with which it closely cooperates. “Here in Germany, we have our sales, expertise, project management and electrical engineering departments, while the technology department in Poland takes care of manufacturing, which we then assemble and ship to our customers,” explains Martin Schkrobol. Both locations have 25 employees each, and in Germany, HUZAP’s turnover is 5 to 6 million EUR, with an upward trend.
It is all in the recipe
“We always look into the future, so the expansion didn’t come out of nowhere,” says Martin Schkrobol. “We want to create more jobs in construction and sales. This naturally leads to further development. My son, a graduated economic engineer, joined the company five years ago and now provides a lot of support in sales, so that we now pursue a two-pronged approach.” Direct contact with customers is particularly important for HUZAP when it comes to finding the right solutions. “We are not a company that simply develops something; we always look at our customer’s needs and then develop a solution together,” adds Martin Schkrobol. “In plant engineering, we are very strong in the field of PVC processing, for example plastic windows, profiles or skirting boards and cable ducts. New formulations are constantly coming in and we develop the appropriate plants. So these are recipe scales in plant engineering. A recipe is created. This process can be compared to baking bread at a bakery. This is exactly what happens in the PVC industry.” The rubber industry is another important area of plant engineering alongside PVC processing. Huzap supplies special-purpose systems for this sector to rubber manufacturers, built precisely according to customer requirements as customized solutions for existing production processes. “Our focus in this field is clearly on customer-specific plant engineering and process-oriented support for rubber manufacturers,” states Martin Schkrobol.
The perfect fit
In the PVC industry, stone-plastic compounding is developing particularly well, which is increasingly replacing laminate flooring in the market. HUZAP has already supplied complete production lines in this segment to several customers. Currently, there is a high demand for modifications and conversions of existing production lines.