On 28 October 2011 the official ground-breaking ceremony for the extension building at VIKING GmbH in Langkampfen took place. The positive development in recent years as well as good perspectives for the future were the reasons for the Tyrolean gardening power tool manufacturer to extend its premises. Ten years ago, the company moved from its original location in Kufstein to Langkampfen, where the last large extension took place five years ago.
Areas will be created for additional assembly units, a new production store, workshops for prototype and operating equipment manufacture as well as apprenticeship training and office space. In total, an additional area of approximately 12,000 m² will be newly built over, with a useful area of approximately 16,000 m². The extension building will be completed as early as October 2012. The investment volume is 13.7 million euros and therefore represents the largest single investment in the company's history.
With this project, VIKING and its parent company STIHL are again making a clear declaration of confidence in the Tyrol location. In the coming years, VIKING will also be increasing the number of its employees, as it has done in recent years.
Hans Peter Stihl, Chairman of the Advisory Board of STIHL Holding AG & Co. KG and VIKING Managing Director Peter Pretzsch are both delighted: "Today is a very important and gratifying day for VIKING, because this project surely represents a further exceptional highlight in the company's history."
VIKING GmbH, which this year celebrates its 30-year company anniversary, produces and sells lawn mowers, robotic mowers, ride-on mowers, scarifiers, garden shredders and tillers. Furthermore, the entire battery-powered product range for the STIHL Group is assembled at VIKING. In 2010, VIKING achieved a turnover of 110 million euros with 268 employees – a result that will be surpassed in 2011. Sales partners are exclusively service-providing specialist dealers.
Photo: "Ground-breaking ceremony for extension building" at VIKING: (from left) Bertram Kandziora, (Chairman of the Board, STIHL AG), Nikolas Stihl (former VIKING Managing Director, who will assume chairmanship of the STIHL Group Advisory Board from the middle of 2012), Hans Peter Stihl (Chairman of the Advisory Board of STIHL Holding AG & Co. KG), Peter Pretzsch (VIKING Managing Director) with Georg Karrer (Mayor of Langkampfen) and Anton Rieder (from the commissioned Kufstein building contractor Rieder).
Photo "photo composition": This is how VIKING will present itself following completion of the extension building from October 2012.
(Photos: printing free of charge)