"We want to continue making decisive investments in the future so that customers can access their Motion Plastics innovations quickly, easily and reliably," promised Frank Blase at the annual press conference in May. The Igus Managing Director and entrepreneur believes that the company has made good progress so far. Take digitalization, for example: "Our 400 square metre real trade fair stand in Cologne has been online since the beginning of May. In the meantime, over 55,000 interested parties from all over the world have visited the stand virtually." The focus of the exhibition is on over 120 new products. These include autumn innovations such as the 3D-printed smart plain bearing, with which the triboplastics specialist is combining Industry 4.0 with 3D printing in just one production step for the first time.

In order to maintain and intensify this path of technology and corporate culture, the company is expanding its management team. The new Managing Directors Gerhard Baus, New Businesses, Michael Blass, E-Chain Systems, Tobias Vogel, Bearings & Linear Technology, and Artur Peplinski, Igus International, now complement the management team led by Frank Blase. "I am delighted to be working with this team. Together we have 148 years of Igus experience," says Blase.

Each of the new managing directors is responsible for a product area worldwide, and one is expanding the companies locally. At the same time, he appointed three new authorized signatories for the Cable, Assembly and Linear Technology & Low Cost Automation product areas. There are also five new authorized signatories for Production, Purchasing and Human Resources. They complement the colleagues for IT and Finance.

"Together with our Igus colleagues, we have already implemented many new investments this year. These include the further automation of the factory, for example through low-cost robots, the creation of new test capacities such as the clean room laboratory and gearbox test stands, as well as the increase in production capacity to more than 560 injection molding machines and 18 newly installed machines for state-of-the-art toolmaking. At the same time, further investments were made in logistics and information systems for short delivery times. The topic of sustainability is becoming increasingly important, emphasizes Frank Blase, who invested in the start-up Mura Technologies last year to support the company in building the first commercial plant that can recycle plastic into crude oil. "In the extended management team, we all agree that we will incorporate the ideas of the circular economy much more strongly into our core business."