Netstal-Maschinen (Näfels / Switzerland; www.netstal.com) has every hope of returning to the black in the current financial year 2009/10. In the crisis year of 2008/09, said CEO and president Bernhard Merki at a press conference in Näfels, the injection moulding machine builder had slipped into the red.

Ever since the all-time low in summer 2009 business had constantly improved, said Merki. He did say, however, that the recovery was progressing more slowly than the downturn, and would presumably take several years. After the first eight months, incoming orders were 25% above the comparable figure for the previous year, but the Netstal CEO gave no details of the sales. Should the Swiss company continue to contribute around a fifth to the overall sales of parent company KraussMaffei (KM, Munich / Germany; www.kraussmaffei.com) – as was the case in the last reported business figures from 2006 – sales would be in the order of EUR 150m. In 2008/09, Netstal posted 10% of its sales in Switzerland, 15% in Germany and 41% in the rest of Europe. Asia accounted for 7%, while North America achieved the second-best year (after 2000) in the company's history, contributing 15% of sales. South America, the Middle East and other regions accounted for the other 12%.

The company now operates in five business groups: PAC (Packaging), CAP (Caps and Closures), PET (PET Preforms), MED (Medical Applications) and TEC (Automotive, E&E). The business with manufacturing machines for optical storage media will be discontinued because of declining sales. Of the remaining business groups, Merki said the crisis hit TEC the hardest, while PET actually recorded growth. PAC, CAP, MED and TEC generated a total of 54% of sales and PET 26%. The growing "service" segment cracked the 20% mark for the first time.

As part of the capacity adjustments caused by the crisis and the withdrawal from the optical storage media business, the number of employees at Netstal fell by around 80 – see Plasteurope.com of 14.10.2009. At the end of the last financial year, the company had a total workforce of 665, of which 505 work at the Näfels site.
In the coming years, Netstal also intends to reduce the number of product lines, from its present four ("Synergy", "Elion", "Evos" and "PETLine") to three. The "SynErgy" range is to be taken over by "Elion" and "Evos" machines. For Netstal, this also means withdrawing from the business with all-hydraulic injection moulding machines. At "K 2010" (27 October – 3 November, 2010; www.k-online.de), Netstal will showcase two new "Elion" hybrid machines with a clamping force of 2,200 and 2,800 kN, as well as the new "aXos" control system, with which the first machines will be fitted from Q1 2011.