Polyurethane (PUR) is – in contrast to its not very attractive name – a fantastic plastics raw material, that performs excellently, for example, in hoses or hose systems for the automotive, pharmaceutical and food industries, as well as in chemicals, farming, engineering and many other areas in the transport of gaseous, liquid, solid, pasty and free-flowing media in all sorts of quantities and volumes.
NORRES Schlauchtechnik GmbH & Co. KG has 85 employees and is known as a leading supplier of technical hoses and hose systems. It is a medium-sized company, founded more than 100 years ago and continues to be managed by its owners. The strong worldwide export activities in support of customers on all continents are controlled from the headquarters in Gelsenkirchen. NORRES has successfully established itself in world markets with its flexible hoses in PUR and other materials. NORRES has grown faster than ever before since Burkhard Mollen joined the company research and development department in 1993, and especially since he was appointed Managing Director in 1998 and drove new developments and export orientation. When Mr. Mollen acquired sole holding of the ownership of NORRES Schlauchtechnik in 2003, it was already clear that the company had to expand, as it had grown beyond the available space at its site in Freiligrathstraße, Gelsenkirchen, Germany.
In the search for possibilities to avoid any future capacity problems in the company’s first plant in Freiligrathstraße by means of an appropriate extension of production facilities, the company did not look towards the East, but made a clear and unmistakable commitment to the German location, in particular to Gelsenkirchen, the hometown of the majority of its 85 highly motivated employees.
With effect from 13th April 2005, NORRES Schlauchtechnik acquired the 55,000 m² site of the Seppelfricke-Herdefabrik oven factory, located at Am Stadthafen 12-16, 45881 Gelsenkirchen. The success of the transaction between NORRES and Eurohypo (Deutsche Bank) was due to a large extent to the high involvement of the Mayor, Frank Baranowski, and the business support department of the town of Gelsenkirchen in the negotiations.
The NORRES staff of 85 selected highly qualified experts is more than satisfied that, with the decision on location, Burkhard Mollen “. . . has paid the staff a great compliment”, as Michael Tülling, Quality and Safety Officer and personnel spokesman at NORRES says, confirming with satisfaction “. . . that the traditional Gelsenkirchen and Schalke plant locations are still attractive for employers and that NORRES will soon make use of its second plant in an excellent and close location”. The staff level will also be expanded further in the medium term. “We plan to take on a further 30 specialist staff from Gelsenkirchen and the surrounding area in order to fulfil the known market requirements of marked growth in our special NORRES technology and will train and retrain them in our machinery and plants, as well as appointing them to our research, product development, sales and administration departments”, Mollen assures.
In view of the present over capacity in the production and storage facilities in the first plant in Freiligrathstraße, renovation work is planned to start in the existing buildings of the new location alongside Kurt-Schumacher-Straße in the course of 2005 and its various stages should be concluded by 2007. NORRES will invest in new machines and production plants in 2005 in order to be able to start up in a flexible way in the new location with the high technology part of the hose production. The visual appearance of the property at the crossroads of the North-South and East-West axes between the two prime town cores of Gelsenkirchen will be taken into account during renovation. It will be possible for the architects to decide in detailed planning up to around mid 2006 on the use and renovation of further buildings (a total of around 15,000m² of halls and office space), subject to the good will of the responsible authorities.
Portrait Dipl.-Ing. Burkhard Mollen
NORRES location, Freiligrathstraße
Seppelfricke premises, Am Stadthafen 12-16
PUR hoses