„A new facility and the breathe of fresh new wind“

„Into the future with full Power“

Hartl Powercrusher is a producer of tracked mobile crushing and screening equipment. The Management consists of Dominik and Alexander Hartl who bring years of Hartl family experience together to run a highly modern production facility using a production process that has been termed „Power Lean Manufacturing“.

An Austrian construction magazine, Baublatt Österreich, recently visited their new production facility in St. Valentin and interviewed Dominik Hartl

Baublatt.Österreich:

Mr Hartl, could you give a short history of your company.

Mr Hartl: My Grandfather started mining river gravel on the Danube river over 85 years ago. In 1935 he established his own quarry and transport business. Professional processing of this river gravel was the core of this new enterprise.

When my Father, Adolf and his brother, Franz took over the business, they started looking for the possibility of utilizing a mobile crusher for their own quarry needs and also to reduce the transport costs of moving the materials around. After a long search they realised that there was nothing adequate on the market and decided to build a crusher on wheels for their own use. After starting to work with their new unit, other quarries and stone operations saw the value of the unit and this was the start of the development and production of mobile crushers by the Hartl family. 1977 saw the first mobile unit built, it was a impactor built on wheels with a very high output. The early 80´s saw the brothers concentrating on the recycling boom that was happening in Germany.

In 1987 they made a revolutionary step forward by producing their first tracked mobile units. We are specialists in tracked mobile units to this day. The brothers realised that lighter, easily transportable unit were more flexible, and in 1995 they introduced the Compact-Line. This was a massive step forward for the entire crushing and screening industry and saw the Hartl brand become pioneers in the field.

Hartl Anlagenbau GmbH has been operating since 2001, this is a completely private, family owned company run by my brother Alexander and myself and is made up of a really dynamic team of emplyees. Alexander handles the procurement and production and I look after sales and marketing. The company is built up of very experienced engineers and professionals who look after service, sales and production.

Baublatt.Österreich:

Austria: From a gravel producer to a leading producer of tracked crushers.

Which innovations and steps made this possible ?

Mr Hartl: The main thing was the development of our product design. This was very important from the beginning and has been a constant process over the last 30 years.

There is one major difference between Hartl and our global competitors – much of our development took place during the recycling boom in Germany. Trying to deal with this as well as looking after quarry operations led us to develop impactors that could be used in primary as well as secondary applications. The other global players coming from England, Sweden and Finland for example, were concentrating on natural stone applications and it is because of this that their machines can only be used as secondary crushers. The recycling trend forced us to develop a geometry in our crusher boxes that was totally different to what everyone else was doing, because of this we had a jump start in development and this allowed Powercrusher to get into the market very quickly.

Talking jaw crushers, we are the only producer who has a toggle position that has been optimised. No one else does this. Our toggle position, sets up a movement that we call a „Quattro Movement“ and starts at the top of the jaw liner and also influences the bottom of the jaw. Material is „pulled“ into the chamber because the jaws have a more vertical movement and also get a post crush as they leave the chamber. This makes for a more cubical end product.

A European specification says that the percentage of „bad shaped“ material is not allowed to exceed 20%, Hartl is the only producer that is able to adhere to this specification using only one crushing process ! A sensational example of this is when a Hartl unit crushers granite to 0/45mm end product size – our percentage has been verified by a laboratory to be 16,8%. That is excellent. This is a massive advantage especially in Europe and is one of the reasons for our global success. The machine can also be used in recycling applications as well as the notoriously difficult round river rock crushing processes.

Baublatt.Österreich:

„Working for Tomorrow“ is your motto. What does this mean exactly ?

Mr Hartl: „Working for Tomorrow“ has been our motto since the start of Anlagenbau. We are future orientated , we are thinking about tomorrow. Investments in research, development and design as well as international support will ensure our success in the future.

With a forward looking company structure and a dymanic management team, we are able to react today to the demands of tomorrow. Part of our success is that we invite our dealers and customers into our company structure, we feel that together, with everyone´s input we are able to develop our machines in a way that most competitors cannot.

We have a very simple but meaningful company philiosophy - with quality products and top service we will be ahead of the rest. We were looking towards the future from the beginning, we for example, left the companies profiits in the company. This has allowed us to secure our liquidity during the global economic crisis that we are going through at the moment.

Baublatt.Österreich:

What does your product pallete offer your customers ?

Mr Hartl: Four different sizes of jaw crusher, from 30 to 54 tons with output capacities ranging from 180 to 450t/h and five different impact crushers with output between 180 and 500 t/h and weights between 30 and 85t. For hard and abbrasive stones, we offer cone crushers and we also produce VSI impactors for the production of sand.

We also have a full range of screening plants, either in grizzly or normal screen versions. On top of this we also produce electro-optical belt scales that measure the volume of material passing over a converyor belt with outstanding accuracy and ease. The scale has massive advantages over the convensional mechanical belt scales.

Baublatt.Österreich:

On the export side Hartl has belonged to the Big Players for a long time.

Can you elaborate a bit on this.

Mr Hartl: Our export rate over the past years lies between 96 and 98%, which shows that we are a very export oriented company. We have exported machines over the last eight years to 56 countries worldwide, the boom being in Eastern Europe. We are also strong in Africa, North and South America, Australia and the Far East, where we have dealers in South Korea and Taiwan.

Baublatt.Österreich:

Do you have any branches outside of Austria or is everything run over dealers ?

Mr Hartl: We do not have any external branches, our structure utilises our global dealer network that we have build up over many years. In North America for example we are in co-operation with Milton CAT who are the second biggest CAT dealer in the world by volume. In Russia we are with the worlds biggest JCB dealer and in Turkey for example we are with a really big Hitachi dealer. These are strong construction machinery dealers who know that there is a synergy in dealing with our products. From our side we use their excellent sales and service structures to make sure that the end customers remain satisfied and continue purchasing Hartl machines.

Baublatt.Österreich:

With such a wide range of machines, service support and spare parts must be a very important topic.

Mr Hartl: We have, as you have already seen on our tour, a very large spare parts warehouse which has 98% of all possible spare parts promptly available. This is a very good stock rate. Our distributors spread all over the globe also have spare part stocks to ensure that parts are locally available and can be delivered to customers in the quickest turn around times possible. The new production facility is extremely well equipped and and we have machines that we can produce our wear plates in-house and more importantly, very quickly.

Baublatt.Österreich:

You have also been presented with prizes. Which awards were these ?

Mr Hartl: 2003 saw our Powercrusher PC 1375 i awarded with the International Design Award Red Dot „Best of the Best“ prize. Selected from 1494 products, it was the first time that a mobile crushing plant was recognised in this way.

In April 2004 the Powercrusher PC 1375 i was again awarded with a Gold Medal at the IBF Exhibition in Brünn for it´s innovative and modern design. Hartl Anlagenbau was also presented with the AMS-Award „Women in the Technical Industry“ award in April 2007.

In 2007 we also won the prize for „ Austria´s Young Entrepeneur Award“. This was presented to us by the Upper Austrian Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with KSV and the Wirtschaftsblatt and meant that we fell into the category „Austria´s Leading Companies“ devision.

In 2008 we were presented with an overall second place in Austria´s Export Awards. This was a very important award for us and we are very proud of this. Presented by the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and the Austrian Ministry of Trade, it means that the investments that we were putting into exports were paying off – it was a great moment and also very motivating for the entire Hartl team.

Baublatt.Österreich:

You seem to place a high priority on apprentice training. How does this work ?

Mr Hartl: We started with our apprentice training program five years ago and the main aim was to take young people into the company and train them to become the machine builders of the future. We currently have eleven apprentices from first year participants up to three year students.

We have over 100 employees currently working in the company.

Baublatt.Österreich:

What is happening with your offices in Mauthausen ?

Mr Hartl: The Mauthausen offices will not be used as a Powercrusher facility in the future. The building will be used by my father who has started with a business which produces and develops electrically driven vehicles.

The company Sensortechnik will also remain at the Mauthausen address. Sensortechnik produces products for the crushing and screening industry, but a lot of developments have taken place and they are expanding into the wood industry with excellent results. They have already installed stations that optimize the de-barking of trees as well as the cutting of wooden planks. They are currently planning to expand into the glass industry as well.

Baublatt.Österreich:

How was 2008 financially and what can be expected in 2009 ?

Mr Hartl: Last year we produced 250 machines that gave us roughly a 62 million Euro turn over. We are anticipating a 30 – 35% decline in these figures for 2009 due to the financial crisis.

We are selling units into many countries that seem to have not been hit so hard by the crisis, and we are concentrating on these markets at the moment. North Africa and South America are examples of these markets that will carry us through the crisis. We are moving well in Libya with our new dealer and anticipate on becoming market leaders in this country next year.

I expect that the crisis may last for one or two more years, but after this we will be operating our new facility at full capacity – this means between 350 and 400 unit per year.

Baublatt.Österreich:

Mr Hartl, please tell me more about your new facility.

Mr Hartl: The new facility was erected on a 60 000m2 plot of land and the building itself has a foot print of 12 000m2. This will allow the company to produce up to 400 units per year using the most modern construction technologies available in Europe – we will build machines to the highest quality standards.

Modern technology is only half of the equation, we also pride ourselves on long tern Know-How as well as qualified personnel – this will allow us to build units of the highest quality with optimal pricing for end customers around the globe.

Even the surface treating of the units will be superior – powdercoating will be used, this is a huge step in the crushing industry. The introduction of powdercoating to a detailed level will be the first in the industry and amount to unparalleled surface quality as well as an environmentally friendly alternative.

One of the major advantages of the facility is that the production can be optimized to such a level that the principle of „just in time“ delivery can be implemented and „lean manufacturing“ will play a huge role in the way that we plan, produce and deliver units in the future.

After the surface treating process, the individual components are assembled at designated islands on a travelling assebly conveyor. The expertise and years of experience of our production crew will ensure that the highest quality is maintained throughout the assembly of the machines. We are extremely proud of the new facility and the people who will run it.

Baublatt.Österreich:

This year saw your brother Stefan Hartl leave the company. Why was this and what are his plans ?

Mr Hartl: Our brother Stefan decided to leave the company and has founded a company that will concentrate on semi – mobile and stationary plants. We will continue to work together with respects to purchasing and sales and I see it as a possibility to expand our already exisiting customer and dealer base.

Short personal summary Mag. Dominik Hartl

Born on 17 Nov 1971

Attended school in Mauthausen

Matriculated in Wilhering

Attended Business College

Studied business at the Johannes Kepler University, Linz

1999 – Entered the crushing & screening industry

2001 – Registered Hartl Anlagenbau GmbH

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