"With what we have achieved today, I would never have imagined this ten years ago!"
Interview with Sven Müsing, Managing Partner of MLL Lamellensysteme GmbH
Protection from wind and weather while still ensuring sustainable air circulation that creates ideal indoor air conditions during the day thanks to night cooling? This is exactly what MLL's louver systems aim to offer. Not least due to the rapidly increasing importance of sustainability in the building sector, the company has been experiencing a marked increase in demand for years. Managing Director Sven Müsing spoke with Wirtschaftsforum about the latest developments.
Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Müsing, your company is engaged in the development and manufacturing of high-quality slat systems – where exactly are your solutions used?
Sven Müsing: We primarily produce aluminum slats in any shape, which we then use to create slat facades and sun/weather protection and ventilation grilles for buildings. These can either be installed into the building envelope or screwed on externally in front of the windows. In conjunction with a fly and bird protection screen, which can be inserted through a corresponding groove, this setup allows for optimal night-time cooling of the building, so that sustainable air exchange can occur at night through the opened, yet secured window, ensuring a pleasant indoor climate for the next day. Additionally, our slats are not only poke and splash water resistant but are also aerodynamically shaped in such a way that they elegantly direct the outside air into the building, or, if structurally feasible, back outdoors on the opposite side of the window.
The central goal of our approach is to offer customers a comprehensive solution from a single source beyond the slats – including all the edge parts and finishing elements needed for installation on the building.
Wirtschaftsforum: What types of buildings are particularly suitable for the use of this technology?
Sven Müsing: Our solution contributes to improving the sustainability record in the building sector, as it eliminates the need for complex blower and recirculation systems by relying entirely on natural air circulation. Consequently, our louver façades are especially suited for buildings with high daytime occupancy, where, thanks to nighttime cooling, people no longer have to stay in stale indoor air. In addition to office complexes, hospitals, and nursing homes, we are thus particularly committed to the construction and renovation of schools and kindergartens. We recently even fully enclosed a school in Luxembourg with our louvers, allowing for easy through-flow of the entire building.
Wirtschaftsforum: A business field that knows no mass production.
Sven Müsing: We also have customers for whom we produce small series, as they need the same component in the same size for their specific field of application. Otherwise, our aim is indeed in manufacturing to the millimeter according to customer requests. Especially with our weather protection grilles and louvered facades, which are also used to cover technical installations on the respective building, we consistently move in project business anyway. At the beginning of the year, we significantly increased our manufacturing depth when we decided to set up our own powder coating.
This allows us to produce even more flexibly now and we have also further improved our own corporate sustainability record – after all, the elaborate transports to our former contractor and the associated packaging waste are now eliminated. Moreover, thanks to this measure, despite our strong growth in recent years, we can now act even more flexibly in the market: From technical clarification to delivery on the construction site, it takes us an average of only four weeks – a pace we also want to maintain in the future.
Wirtschaftsforum: What changes have accompanied this robust growth?
Sven Müsing: What we have achieved today, I would not have expected ten years ago. Four years ago, we were still manufacturing in Hamburg on a plot of 8,000 m2 with a production area of 2,500 m2. When we then acquired a plot in Ahrensburg in a new development area with over 12,000 m2 area, this already entailed an expansion of the production area to over 3,600 m2. A year later, the next plot was added, with an additional 3,000 m2 of production area, before this year with our in-house powder coating the next expansion followed.
We have expanded just as rapidly in terms of personnel and have been able to gain two dozen new employees since last September. We have also managed to weather the macroeconomic crises of recent years well – thanks to a steadily increasing demand for our solution, compelling marketing, a reliable field sales force, and a great team that holds together impressively.