A privately owned engineering group has acquired Baumann Solms, ending a period of administration for a second Baumann business.
After Perfecta’s transition into Perfecta Precision Systems as part of the Solvesta group, Baumann Solms is now part of the Pütz Group. This is a collection of engineering businesses with automation to the fore and is owned by industrialist Stefan Pütz.
The group covers 12 companies across nine locations in Germany. Its head office is in Saarburg close to the border with Luxembourg. It has 90 staff and generates sales of €18 million, 60% of which comes from Germany.
Baumann Solms is its first and as yet only incursion into the printing industry. The operation there becomes Baumann Packing and Baumann Print Finishing which works closely with Perfecta in supplying automation systems around the cutting technology. This includes pile turners, jogging tables, lifts, Basa robot systems for loading and unloading stacks. One robot can mange the flow of work through two guillotines.
The group makes a point of how the different technologies its businesses have can feed into each other. Thus Innovision is company using cameras and robots to measure surfaces, checking for faults and testing. Another is Sampas + SilverCut which delivers robot handling systems using different styles of gripper head. There is also technology for filling for food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries where there may be overlap with Baumann which has machinery for this purpose.
Baumann Solms was placed in administration in February following a similar move for Baumann Perfecta six weeks earlier. Other Baumann businesses, including Baumann Wohlenberg producing bookbinding machinery, have not been declared insolvent.
However, the administrations are among a spate of reorganisations among German engineering businesses supplying the printing industry. Chief among these is Manroland Sheetfed which is due to lay of almost all staff at the end of this week, and Polar which is undertaking its second reorganisation of recent years.
