Banner WRITES AN

85-YEAR SUCCESS STORY

In the wake of the challenging corona period, the battery manufacturer was more than delighted to be able to celebrate its 85th birthday together with its personnel. Over 500 employees, including some 200 from the company’s thirteen sales organisations, accepted an invitation to come to the jubilee event at Banner’s headquarters in Leonding, Austria. TV-presenter Nina Kraft guided the guests through the entertaining evening.

Leonding, 14.6.2022. In the 1930s, the company's founder, Artur Bawart, launched a small business with a handicraft character in the western Austrian province of Vorarlberg and since 1937 Banner has been successfully involved in battery business. Today, the Banner Group is Austria’s only car battery producer and one of the industry’s five largest manufacturers in Europe. The cousins and company owners, Commercial CEO, Andreas Bawart, and Technical CEO, Thomas Bawart, are not only proud of this achievement, but also most grateful, for as Thomas Bawart emphasises, “Decades of good, hard and frequently gruelling work lie behind us and such efforts would have been impossible without our dedicated employees.”

Continuity, quality and stability are values that epitomise Banner and therefore during the jubilee event, the management took special pleasure in honouring a large number of long-serving members of the workforce. Thomas Bawart, “We are particularly proud of the colleagues who have loyally and competently supported the company in the hotly contested battery market for ten, twenty and even forty years.”

85 years of full power

The jubilee event commenced with tours of the company premises in Leonding and as a special attraction, the recently opened location in nearby Thalheim. Above all, this opportunity was greatly appreciated by the employees who had travelled to Austria from other countries.

The evening programme was characterised by topics such as the opportunities for growth. For example, insights were provided into the plans of the Energy Solutions business unit with regard to energy storage solutions. Moreover, the social and political issues relating to sustainability, decarbonisation and climate neutrality were also addressed, and naturally enough, a couple of anecdotes from Norbert Bawart, Andreas’ father and Managing Director for many years until 1996, were an indispensible item on the agenda.

Investments in expanded production capacity

Over the past three years, more than 30 million euros have been invested in the development of the Leonding location. Thomas Bawart, “Our main focal points were and remain the optimisation of order-related production, future-proof planning and logistics capacities and, first and foremost, digitalisation and the permanent improvement of our processes.” Accordingly, the Banner personnel were especially intrigued by news about the investment plans regarding building redesign at the group’s headquarters and how the installation of a photovoltaic plant was progressing.

Looking to the future

Although the trend amongst car manufacturers is clearly headed in the direction of e-mobility, this does not mean that classic lead-acid batteries have had their day. Thomas Bawart, “In my estimation, vehicles with combustion engines will continue to account for a significant share of the aftermarket. Furthermore, in the long-haul truck segment, there are currently no alternatives to the combustion engine. Therefore, we also see great opportunities for future starter and utility battery growth in this area.”

After the informative and partly emotional speeches, the Banner birthday cake was cut and the company’s anniversary duly celebrated.

Captions:

Photo. 1: Festive cake cutting Andreas and Thomas Bawart (from left) with Nina Kraft

Photo 2: Banner’s highly committed workforce celebrated 85 years of full power

Additional photographic material is available from the downloadcenter under https://www.bannerbatterien.com/Downloadcenter