Come the new year, leading plastics and rubber machinery manufacturer KraussMaffei (Munich / Germany; www.kraussmaffei.com) will be led by a new board chairman. Jan Olaf Siebert will take over the helm on 1 January 2012, following in the footsteps of Dietmar Straub, who held the position since April 2007 but has expressed his desire to quit the group.

Siebert’s career as an engineer spans 18 years in leading management positions focused on strategy, research and development as well as marketing and sales. He currently serves as CEO of Gea Heat Exchangers. Over the last seven years, Siebert has focused on driving the globalisation of business activities, especially by developing the markets in eastern Europe, China and Brazil. Gea Heat’s roughly 8,000 employees generated sales of about EUR 1.5 bn in 2010.

KraussMaffei’s board has expressed its thanks to Straub for his years in office, emphasising that he had advanced the group’s strategic reorientation and steered it safely through the global economic crisis.