SWARCO Inaugurates New Factory in Lower Austria

On 3 June, a good 250 guests from the workforce, politics, business, and the neighbourhood celebrated the official opening with a summer party.

SWARCO’s CEO Michael Schuch explained in his speech that the founding site on Industriestrasse in Amstetten was bursting at the seams in terms of capacity after more than five decades of successful operations. “So we decided to remain loyal to the Amstetten district and build anew on a greenfield site in Neufurth. We have made the largest single investment in our company’s history and, with technological innovations and process optimisations, have thus built what is probably the most modern and sustainable glass bead factory in the world. Our business partners in 80 countries on all continents will benefit from this in terms of product quality, product range diversity, and service,” said Schuch, who expressed special thanks to the staff for their enormous efforts in recent months.

In addition to innovative production facilities for micro glass beads, the new site also houses the “Centre of Competence” of the Road Marking Systems Division, with modern laboratories as well as pilot and test facilities. With new technologies and an increased level of automation, SWARCO is taking another step towards increasing customer satisfaction.

Peter Tomazic, Vice President Production & R&D of SWARCO’s Road Marking Systems Division, emphasises that the company has pushed the issue of sustainability from planning to construction and operation. “Energy efficiency and pollution reduction are at the heart of the production and development work,” Tomazic said. “All electrical processes run on electricity from Austrian hydropower and other sustainable energy sources. We use the waste heat from the production processes as heating energy for the building. The dust particles from the filter systems are recycled directly in the factory. We also pay great attention to minimising the ecological footprint of all future SWARCO products in the RMS Division,” Tomazic underlined. During the opening ceremony, the company demonstrated corporate social responsibility in action and presented the Lower Austrian nature conservation organisation Lanius with a cheque containing a donation of money and, above all, time for volunteer work in the interest of environmental protection.