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Bautzen/Nuremberg – Leoni has commissioned its new plant in Bautzen. At the facility located in Saxony, eastern Germany, about 30 employees will in the future refine various materials such as cables, hoses and drinking water pipes by means treatment with electron beams. The new factory underpins Leoni’s plans for growth in Eastern Europe and in Germany’s eastern federal states.
With this new production facility in Bautzen, which covers an area of approx. 7,500 square metres, the Leoni Group has expanded its capacity for what is known as irradiation crosslinking. The first of the two electron beam accelerators, each of which is more than 5 metres high and weighs 80 tons, has been in operation since the end of February; the second will be ready to go into operation in the summer of 2009. The workforce in Bautzen will then also be increased from its present number of 15 to about 30 people in the future. Orders from Eastern Europe and the eastern federal states in Germany are already assured; the existing facility in Däniken, Switzerland will no longer be able to handle all its orders because local capacity is fully utilised. The new plant in Bautzen has capacity to crosslink for example 100 million metres of floor heating pipes per year.
Changed structure provides improved material properties
In the process of irradiation crosslinking, Leoni’s employees accelerate electrons by means of high voltages up to 3 million in a high vacuum to nearly the speed of light. They thereby treat objects such as plastic pipes, foils, cables, and conductors as well as technical products of all kinds. By crosslinking their polymer molecules, i.e. their chemical structure, these products obtain the properties of comparatively more expensive, usually more difficult to process high performance plastics. The process makes products, for example, more dimensionally stable when subjected to heat, more resistant to chemicals, solvents and temperature fluctuation as well as harder and more resistant to abrasion.
Leoni is, with this new facility, expanding its position as one of Europe’s leading providers of radiation services. Strong rates of growth are likely in the years ahead, above all in Eastern Europe. The foundation-laying ceremony of the Bautzen plant took place on 28 January 2008 in the presence of Mayor Christian Schramm.
