Yesterday we had a press release from Austrian furnace builder Aichelin Group about the firm forming a joint venture with Turkish furnace builder Sistem Teknik to “produce and distribute industrial vacuum heat treatment technologies and services in Europe” (https://themonty.com/furnace-builder-aichelin-to-offer-vacuum-furnaces/). The press release made for very interesting reading and prompted a number of thoughts from “The Monty”.

 

First and foremost this is no surprise as the CEO of Aichelin, Mr. Christian Grosspointer had hinted at exactly this in an interview he did with “The Monty” in 2023-the interview can be found at https://themonty.com/project/mr-christian-grosspointner-ceo-aichelin/. We at “The Monty Heat Treat News” have always considered Aichelin to be one of the two largest furnaces builders in the world with Aichelin and Ipsen generally swapping the title of the largest furnace builder in the world depending upon the year. For Aichelin to expand into this very  substantial market makes complete sense.

 

We look forward to further details about this joint venture as we can see several interesting points. For instance the press release mentions that this is a joint venture for Europe-will this expand to other geographic areas such as North America? Sistem Teknik currently has little presence on the continent, it will be interesting to see whether this JV expands to include areas other than Europe.

 

Sistem Teknik we know as the largest new furnace builder in Turkey and a company which produces most types of furnaces including atmosphere systems. This means some of their product offerings can potentially be in direct competition with Aichelin, again it will be interesting to see how this issue is handled. We look forward to all the details.