The senior partner of injection moulding machine manufacturer Arburg (Lossburg, Germany; www.arburg.com) Eugen Hehl has passed away. The long-standing chairman of the management board died on 12 December 2023 at the age of 94. 

Arburg honours the trained master mechanic, who shaped the now-third-generation family business for more than seven decades, for his entrepreneurial vision and services to the development of global sales. Hehl began building up Arburg’s own, initially regional, sales structures in 1951, followed six years later by the company’s first participation in an international trade fair in Amsterdam. As early as 1962, he travelled to Japan and the US to further boost machinery sales.

He also left his mark on the main factory in Lossburg with the grid design, which made subsequent expansions easier and served as a model for other subsidiaries. The ambitious hunter and sportsman was known for his social commitment – in the 1990s, together with his brother Karl Hehl, who died in November 2010, he built the Gebrüder Hehl-Stift in Lossburg, a residence for assisted living, short-term care, and care for the elderly run by the Diakonie charitable organisation.

Eugen Hehl was honoured with the Federal Cross of Merit for his achievements in November 2000. During the course of his life, he also received the Baden-Württemberg Business Medal (1990), honorary citizenship of the municipality of Lossburg (1997), the Business Management Award of the Society of Plastics Engineers (2007), and the Richard Vieweg Medal of Honour of the association of German engineers (2020). He was also inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame in 2015 for his life’s work.