ALUMINIUM 2014 Blog

Christian Wellner, managing director of the GDA (german Aluminium association)

Reed Exhibitions (RX): Mr. Wellner, as a founding partner and as institutional patron of ALUMINIUM, the GDA has supervised and supported the event right from the outset. You have been managing director of the GDA for many years now and were amongst those who first developed the idea of an ALUMINIUM trade fair and presented it to the industry. Can you tell our readers something about your career. How did you get involved with aluminium and the GDA?

Christian Wellner (CW): I’ve been working in the aluminium industry and its different bodies for nearly 30 years now. I studied Economics and my first job afterwards was with an aluminium industry trade association. My father advised to gain some experience there and then to do something “with good prospects”. In the mid-1980s there was a major boom in demand for aluminium as a material and in the aluminium industry as a whole. I very quickly realised that I’d found an industry with a bright future and with plenty of scope for development. Which is basically why I’m still here, working for a material and an industry which still has outstanding potential – and indeed one “with good prospects”.

RX: What do you see as the main challenges facing the aluminium industry in 2012?

CW: Despite the national debt crisis, our sector is facing the coming year with a degree of cautious optimism.  German producers are strongly placed amongst the international competition and benefit from their high degree of specialisation. If the politicians can come up with answers to the urgent national debt questions in Europe which the markets find satisfactory, this will considerably boost business expectations for the current year. And this, in conjunction with the positive underlying trend in the key aluminium industry markets, would provide a solid foundation for further growth in 2012.

RX: The GDA organised the EAC – European Aluminium Congress – at the end of November. What indications emerged from this regarding future developments for the industry?

CW: The international congress gave the equipment and technology partners of the aluminium producers and processors a platform for presenting their latest developments. The speakers and the experts from the national and international aluminium industry who took part all agreed that the technology partners and equipment providers to the aluminium industry can expect to face increasing demands in the future. Besides machinery and equipment, our sector needs providers with a comprehensive understanding of the whole process and extensive systemic know-how at all stages of the aluminium value creation chain – from production and processing right through to the area of recycling, which is now growing in significance. Read Full Post

GDA Gesamtverband der Aluminiumindustrie together with Reed Exhibitions are planning and organizing the conference accompanying ALUMINIUM 2012. Under the name “Aluminium – Material for the Future” presentations are planned on the subjects of processes, transport, automotive, surface and aluminium markets.

Specialists from companies, research institutes and universities are warmly invited to submit presentations on these subjects. The submitted contributions will be examined by a programme committee, which may also permit other subject areas. The contributions will be compiled into a publication and made available.

The submission deadline for the abstracts is 23 March 2012.

More information and details on the call for papers can be found at the conference website:

http://www.aluminium-conference.de

The conference will begin each day at 9:30 a.m. and end at 4:30 p.m. Each session with its six presentations is a half day in length and will be organized in terms of its subjects so that conference visitors will have an opportunity to spend the second half of the day viewing the exhibition. The sessions can be booked individually.

Your contact for questions concerning content:
Wolfgang Heidrich
Tel: +49 211 4796-271
wolfgang.heidrich@aluinfo.de

The SMS group will continue to support the ALUMINIUM trade fair in future as its main sponsor. The group of companies which is subdivided into the SMS Siemag and SMS Meer business divisions, is one of the leading suppliers in the field of plant and machinery for the steel and aluminium industry. For the next three events, the SMS group and the world fair of the aluminium industry will continue their partnership of many years.
ALUMINIUM 2012 will take place from 9 to 11 October – with Düsseldorf as the venue this year for the first time. With almost nine months still to go to the opening, the trade fair already occupies a noticeably larger exhibition area at its ninth edition than its predecessor two years ago in Essen. Currently the organiser, Reed Exhibitions Deutschland GmbH, records an increase of almost 20 percent, with a total of 950 exhibitors from 50 nations expected at ALUMINIUM 2012.

SMS group is exhibiting at ALUMINIUM 2012 in hall 9, booth 9C20.

Mr. Frank Busenbecker, Commercial Managing Director of Erbslöh Aluminium GmbH

Q: Please introduce yourself – who you are, what your responsibilities are at Erbslöh Aluminium GmbH?

A: My name is Frank Busenbecker and I’m the Commercial Managing Director of Erbslöh Aluminium GmbH. My colleague, Norbert-William Sucke, who is responsible for all technical affairs, and me are wholly responsible for the business success of this part of the WKW-group.

Q: Could you give us a quick overview of Erbslöh Aluminium GmbH?

A: Erbslöh Aluminium GmbH combines the competence gained in handling the sophisticated material Aluminium from the early phases of aluminium processing with modern management methods: Since its foundation in 2001, this company represents the development, production and distribution of extruded aluminium profiles for automotive and industrial applications.

Press equipment consisting of six hydraulically operated extruders with a pressing force of 12,5 MN to 44 MN meets our customers’ challenging requirements. Our product spectrum covers:

• Semi-finished products for automotive suppliers
• Decorative profiles for sanitary equipment and furniture accessories
• Decorative and functional parts for consumer electronics
• Profiles for manufacturing of heat exchangers
• Embossed aluminum sheets

The two in-house high purity alloy melting plant, which processes e.g. ultra-pure aluminum alloys into round bars, deserves special attention. The resulting semi-finished products – in form of ALMINOX® profiles – enjoy highest reputation worldwide.

Q: Has your company always been involved in the automotive sector?

A: When it comes to combining design components with functional parts requirements, aluminum material is plainly the ideal solution. Thus, the material is used for semi-finished profiles nearly in all industrial areas. Of course, our roots lie in the automotive sector, especially for decorative moldings and roof strips, panels, window guides – even for complete greenhouse solutions -, hood components as well as roof railing systems.

Our group WKW.automotive offers the complete program – from material alloy to molding and extruding of semi-finished products all the way to mechanical processing and surface finishing. Further, highly complex extrusion processes are applied in the production of heat exchangers. Our specialties include filigree micro multiports, as well as the large volume cross-section of multiport profiles.

In the industrial design-oriented product areas of Erbslöh Aluminium GmbH, like sanitary equipment and furniture accessories, or consumer electronics, it is inconceivable to do without applications made of aluminium, often also of ALMINOX^®. High functionality, together with a flawless surface appearance is an unbeatable argument in favour of our material.

Q: Looking to the future, where do you think the aluminium industry as a whole, and the automotive sector are headed?

A: Aluminium is still a young and modern metal. It has only been produced on an industrial scale since 1886, when Hall and Héroult independently discovered how to produce aluminium through electrolysis. In 1900 annual output of aluminium was one thousand tonnes. By the end of the twentieth century annual production had reached 32 million tonnes, comprising 24 million tonnes of primary aluminium and 8 million tonnes from recycled metal. This makes aluminium the world’s second most used metal, and this trend is constantly continuing.

Aluminium makes not only a key contribution to fuel-efficient engines in cars, but is an indispensable element of the design of premium automobiles. Further, by reducing the vehicles’ weight, it cuts down on fuel consumption and emissions, without compromising the size or the safety of the vehicles.

Q: What developing trend, idea or technology makes you most excited or hopeful for the future?

A: The manufacturers of vehicles and their suppliers are seeking to reduce the environmental impacts caused by transport. The aluminium industry helps to meet this challenge with its contribution to light-weighting, improved performance and to improved safety. Different life-cycle assessments have shown that 1 kg of aluminium in a car body, replacing 2 kg of steel in a conventional car body, saves, during the life-time of the car, about 20 kg of greenhouse gas emissions. Since aluminium has a high strength to weight ratio, vehicles designed to use aluminium components can achieve the benefits of light-weighting without reducing the safety of the passengers or the performance of the vehicle. For the first decade of this millennium the use of aluminium in cars is predicted to double because of more cars world-wide and more aluminium in cars.

Every time aluminium is used nowadays it is dependent on luxury strategies. As mentioned before, for automobiles this applies also to reducing the weight of the vehicle, and to the higher articulate power and aesthetic distinctiveness achieved when using aluminium for internal and external surface design.

Of course, these key factors will influence our presentation at the ALUMINUM 2012. The detailed planning of our stand, inclusive the choice which innovations will be shown there, is moving into a crucial phase in the first quarter of the year. Only so much shall betrayed: ALMINOX^® will be in the center of our presentation.

For Erbslöh Aluminium GmbH the ALUMINIUM is the leading exhibition. We expect an increasing number of visitors, of course the vast majority our present and hopefully future customers.