GKD increases sales by almost 10 %

The technical weaving mill for industry and architecture GKD - Gebr. Kufferath AG (GKD) once again continued its success story in the financial year 2018: With sales up to 95.3 million euros, the GKD Group exceeded the previous year's figure by 9.6 percent. All divisions and subsidiaries contributed to this positive result. As a result, the third-generation owner-managed family business continued to expand its position as a global market leader in defined niche markets. The growth rate is also reflected in the 14 percent rise in the number of employees: As at the balance sheet date of 31 December 2018, GKD employed 871 people across the Group, 457 of them (+3.2 percent) at the Dürener headquarters. In the reporting year, GKD once again invested a total of 4.8 million euros in the future: In addition to further modernization, automation and capacity expansion of machinery and equipment, the focus was on expanding Dürener's corporate headquarters by 700 square meters of office space.

In four business areas - industrial fabrics, process belts, architectural fabrics and transparent media facades - GKD is world market leader for technical fabrics made of metal and plastic as well as spiral braid. The global presence is ensured by six own factories as well as worldwide subsidiaries and agencies. "The basis of our success is the breadth of our technology portfolio with the consistently pursued claim of technology leadership in the relevant markets," says GKD Board member Dr. Ing. Stephan Kufferath. In connection with the internationalization, which has been intensively promoted for years, this strategy showed in the 2nd financial year 2018 again success. With an increase of 38.7 percent, the American market had the largest share of the sales growth achieved. This was due to the strong expansion of own production activities as well as a new production facility in the USA. Despite the good performance of GKD-India, Asia and Australia failed to match last year's success (-38.2 percent). In 2017, the major architectural contract for Tencent's headquarters in China had contributed significantly to a record result for Asia. In Europe and South Africa, sales increased by 7.5 percent.

Source and Photo: GKD