Modern plastics technology is daily omnipresent: elegant telephone receivers, high-tech car keys, fancy pots for cosmetics. Thus also a piece of innovative strength from Nabburg is omnipresent since 20 years – made by INOTECH Kunststofftechnik. Its founder Josef Gleixner has made company history as developer and producer of two-component plastics engineering, which is making life easier and better for everybody – every day.

When Josef Gleixner looks back on 20 years since the foundation of the company, his usually friendly-laughing eyes are watering. “Today I miss the commercial handshake-mentality that you can rely on.” This is the managing director’s résumé, resulting from his experiences in the last two decades. And he remembers exactly the moment when the savings bank director in Nabburg - Helmut Rossmann - handed him 1.2 million DM as starting capital in 1990. “This was processed with a minimum of formal effort. Basis was nothing but confidence. Nowadays this is absolute impossible in our economy,” deplores the director of INOTECH.

Josef Gleixner assures that the result of this credit was not only one without sleep. It was rather the foundation stone for a success story which is a role model in the middle class. Innovation strength pushed development. Everything happened rapidly. In 1990 four employees were involved. Two years later INOTECH had already 50 employees and 150 in 1997. Today INOTECH employs 220 jobholders in Nabburg and further 150 in the Czech company site. But apprenticeship has always been an important main pillar in human resource development, too. 90 trainees completed their training at INOTECH in 10 different professions. This year, Josef Gleixner started a training offensive once again and recruited more apprentices.

Employees are the capital for good products. “Zero-defect-strategy” and “innovation spirit” are the keywords that made INOTECH successful. More than 1,300 different plastic products produced in the injection moulding company in Nabburg are in everyday use at the moment: starting from cordless telephones of the Gigaset series to parts for the business seats of the Lufthansa Airbus planes and car keys, which launched INOTECH’s success story. A patent applied by Josef Gleixner was the basis for production orders and by today more than 80 million key housings have been produced. A key produced in Nabburg starts every ride with the Porsche Cayenne and many Volkswagen, Opel, BMW, Peugeot, Renault and Citroen-models. Innovation spirit and patents are the strengths of the company in Nabburg. All in all INOTECH today possesses 35 patents and utility patents in different areas.

Especially the two-component procedure (2K) featured the power spectrum of INOTECH. “Temporarily each second produced two-component injection moulding machine was delivered to our production halls.” This is how Josef Gleixner describes the increasing power of his company with today approximately 100 injection moulding machines, at a range of 25 to 1000 t closing force. The uniqueness of many INOTECH products was established by the use of two-component procedures. “We applied two-component procedures, where nobody considered solving problems with it,” explained the injection moulding expert. This was revolutionary in the automotive sector, simplified many things in the medical sector and today affects the cosmetical branch.

However: What is in the future? Josef Gleixner betrays his strategy: “We count on two-component procedure and our entrepreneurial spirit, furthermore on the development of dispensers free of preservatives, in order to avoid allergies.” And he has got the gloss of an inventor in his eyes.

INOTECH in a nutshell:

Employees: 220 in Germany; 150 in Czech Republic
Apprentices: 90 in 20 years
Production Area: 10,000 m²
Injection Moulding Machines: Approx. 100
Clean Room Classes: 10,000 and 100,000

Range of Performance:

• Development
• Injection Moulding
• Varnishing
• Lasing 
• Printing
• Component Assembly

Sectors:

• Automotive
• Telecommunications
• Medicine, Pharma
• Cosmetics
• Aviation 
• Engineering

 

Meet Inotech Cosmetic Packaging at CosmeticBusiness 2010:
Hall 1, Booth C 17

 

Source: INOTECH Kunststofftechnik GmbH