Wirtschaftsforum: How extensive are the closed loops in the industry now?

Tobias Lanner: Not least, economic realities have ensured that this issue is a top priority for nearly all metalworking companies. One of our clients, for example, manufactures wheels for the automotive industry and related sectors and operates its own foundry as part of this process. The chips generated in his production go through our reprocessing plant and from there directly find their way back to the foundry, where they are immediately melted down without thermal redrying and soon become part of a new wheel – this is not only an ecologically sustainable solution but also economically sensible. As fewer raw materials need to be purchased, the financial return is significantly higher than scrapping the original waste material.

Wirtschaftsforum: Will there be further applications for your solutions in the future?

Tobias Lanner: We are already working intensively on this today – especially because so-called rare earths, used among other things in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles, require resource-efficient production methods due to their global scarcity and the enormous difficulties in mining them. Our facilities can of course provide targeted support here. However, to date, no clean and scalable recycling solutions for lithium-ion batteries exist. This needs to change in the coming years as the demand for battery raw materials increases and more batteries enter the recycling cycle. Hence, we are already working on relevant research projects that have already yielded promising results. But beyond the battery industry, we see many more application areas in plastic and building material recycling where our expertise will be in even greater demand. Our high manufacturing depth of up to 90% and our customer-centered approach, in which we accompany our partners from the design of the respective plant through its installation to sometimes decades of aftersales, provide an indispensable foundation for our further growth.

Wirtschaftsforum: What further innovations are currently at the center of your attention?

Tobias Lanner: We are developing several processes to be able to select, separate, and recycle the often cited rare earths even better – through the sensor technology available today, there is still a very extensive potential that we want to effectively utilize. Moreover, the integration of our plants with the production environments of our clients in the context of Industry 4.0 is gaining importance. It opens up various possibilities for benefit gains and better customer retention. Especially for centrifuges with very high speeds, a sensor can now reliably detect any deviations and report them via radio, to indicate a possible forthcoming failure. This allows potential problems to be identified early on and ideally, completely avoid resulting downtime.

Wirtschaftsforum: How do you see Germany as an industrial location changing in the next few years?

Tobias Lanner: I do not see the often-discussed deindustrialization happening. Rather, there is likely to be a shift towards an even more specialized and knowledge-intensive industry, from which exciting new opportunities will emerge. The indispensable basis for the continued success of German industry specifically lies with the younger people. Here, I would like a more practice-oriented and life-relevant education system that introduces children and adolescents to the working world earlier. I myself am involved, for example, in the initiatives ‘Schüler im Chefsessel’ and ‘Wellenschlag’, which aim to enable exactly this. Meanwhile, it will become even more important for companies to also focus on people within their workforce – as Lanner has been doing with its medium-sized tradition for over 30 years.