Schlagmann Poroton invests € 3.5 million in brick research centre
In the course of the next few months, brick and block producer Schlagmann Poroton will be putting up a “brick research and development centre” at their company base in Zeilarn, Bavaria. The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by Bavaria‘s Environment Minister Dr. Marcel Huber and numerous guests of honour. Work at the new research centre for backing bricks will be focusing on high-performance bricks and insulating materials in addition to ecofriendly production technologies. According to managing partner Johannes Edmüller, this marks another step toward achievement of the company‘s goal of producing with a zero net CO2 footprint by the year 2020. The research centre is scheduled for completion by the spring of 2014.
All in all, some € 3.5 million is being invested in the project, with the construction part accounting for € 1.6 million. This, when completed, is where the in-house production control will be brought together within the scope of quality management, and where the ongoing – partly “European” – research projects devoted to efficiency enhancement in the development of ceramic building and insulating materials will be concentrated.
One of the company‘s good reasons for investing in a brick research centre is Schlagmann‘s close cooperation with Wienerberger AG. As Edmüller sees it: “We will be setting new milestones here for the entire branch.” Indeed, with Wienerberger‘s help, the new research centre is intended to double Schlagmann‘s speed of innovation.
Schlagmann Poroton is also counting on a 2013 commitment on the part of the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs to promote a roughly € 3 million, three-year research project in cooperation with the Georg-Simon-Ohm College of Technology in Nuremberg. The purpose of that project is to optimize clay and loam to such an extent, that material inputs can be reduced by roughly one-third and still achieve the same, to some extent even better, physicostructural product characteristics.
