How was the merger of the companies received on the market?

The feedback has been thoroughly positive - because with OnRobot we are not just launching the next collaborative products on the market, but are really filling a gap in the market with our vision:

As a one-stop store, we want to offer all the components that our end customers and partners need to implement collaborative robot applications. In addition, our products should offer intuitive plug & play functions for the cobot and lightweight robot models of all common manufacturers and provide a uniform user interface across all manufacturers.

The market for collaborative robot applications is predicted to grow massively over the next few years. The only way to realize this growth is to further reduce the time and effort required to develop and implement such applications - otherwise engineers worldwide will soon reach their limits. And this is exactly where our One-Stop-Shop concept comes in:

All components should be immediately available together and as easy as possible to set up, without the system integrator or end user having to worry about compatibility.

How far are you on the way to becoming the global market leader for user-friendly end-of-arm tooling?

We currently have seven products in our portfolio and a global network of around 200 partner companies that sell robot solutions with our products and integrate them with end users. In order to achieve our ambitious goals, we will offer 50 different products within two years - grippers of various types, sensors, vision solutions and software. We also want to expand our sales network even further by then.

It will be important for our further growth that our solutions are used in the peripherals of various robot manufacturers and that we do not limit ourselves in this area. We already have a good position in the Universal Robots environment, which is why we are now expanding our partner network in other directions. We want to increase the compatibility of our products with those of other suppliers.

You announced further acquisitions last year. Which other companies have you taken over and which will follow and with what objective?

In September 2018, the Danish start-up Purple Robotics became the next company to be integrated into OnRobot. We will successively acquire further start-ups with innovative end-of-arm tooling. I already have very specific ideas about this. The aim behind this is to expand our product portfolio so that we offer everything that is needed for the development and implementation of collaborative robot applications - regardless of the application, industry, production environment or workpiece. Incidentally, the acquired start-ups also benefit from this, as they can hardly get faster market access for their products than through OnRobot.