Even without the two new companies, Balluff would have achieved record growth of 16 percent. "It is already clear that we will exceed our sales target of 500 million euros for 2019 as planned - the only question is when exactly," says Managing Director Katrin Stegmaier-Hermle at the presentation of the balance sheet figures. The Balluff Group employs 3,600 people worldwide. That is around ten percent more than in the previous year. 1,300 of these employees work in Germany, and 100 new employees have joined the company at its headquarters in Neuhausen alone in the past two years. The return on sales has once again improved slightly from nine percent in 2016 to currently 10.5 percent.

Growing pressure to automate in many sectors

The Managing Director cited five reasons for the strong result: the positive market development worldwide, particularly strong growth in important sectors such as the automotive, packaging, food and beverage industries as well as among machine and plant manufacturers, the general increase in automation pressure in many other sectors, Balluff's good delivery performance and the integration of the companies iss innovative software services and Matrix Vision in 2017. The two new additions contributed around 20 million euros to the increase in turnover.

Stegmaier-Hermle also painted a positive picture of the first quarter of 2018, with growth remaining very strong at around nine percent. The continued positive economic development and the current order situation made Balluff optimistic for 2018 as a whole. The Group has a stable financial foundation: the equity ratio remains extremely high at 76 percent and the bank rating of AAA+ is the best that a company of this size can achieve. In addition, Balluff is investing heavily in its future success with a research and development ratio of 13.3%.

Managing Director Michael Unger outlined the associated goal: "We have doubled Group turnover in the past seven years and we are aiming to double it again in the next five to seven years. To achieve this, the organization must continue to develop." Unger presented the company's orientation with a clear focus on the requirements of the most important key industries. Balluff is now organized into seven business units. Three of these combine all solutions for the main industries of Mobility, Packaging, Food & Beverage and Machine & Plant Engineering in a single organizational unit. In addition, there are four further divisions: Marketing & Sales, Technology, Supply Chain and Services, Finance & Quality. Each of the seven divisions has its own head, who together form the extended Executive Board.

Transferring automation experience to the IIoT

Balluff has been shaping automation for more than 50 years, says Managing Director Florian Hermle, and has transferred this experience to the transition to IIoT and now offers all the necessary solutions from data generation to transport and evaluation. Balluff is strong in the areas of hardware, connectivity and the visualization of data. The data creates transparency and makes visible what happens when and why something happens in production.

According to Hermle, Balluff will focus more strongly on software in the future in order to deliver even better integrated automation solutions from a single source. "This is why we integrated the Stuttgart-based software company iss innovative software services and the machine vision pioneer Matrix Vision into the Group in 2017. This expertise helps us to exploit the major growth opportunities of digitalization even better and faster and to expand our portfolio in both hardware and software," Hermle said with conviction.