URBAN: Over 800 professional equipments delivered in Romania

Urban Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG, founded in 1950, became, in the next decade, a leading manufacturer of electrical equipments for the PVC joinery manufacturing activity. Currently, the company has over 600 employees, reporting an average turnover of more than 80 million EUR. Being active for more than half of a century in the international market, Urban delivered 18,000 welding machines and more than 10,000 equipments for corner cleaning. About 20% of production was marketed, over time, in countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and the share of deliveries to other destinations in Europe was 40%. All Urban products benefit from specialized service, 150 international experts providing the professional technical support for partners all over the world. The management of the Romanian subsidiary considers that this area had a chaotic evolution in the last years. The biggest problems were caused by lack of proper assessment of the demand, which could provide a realistic sizing of the manufacturing capacity. Also, a completely unprofessional approach to the entire issue related to the maintenance of equipment was registered. Official financial reports indicate for Urban C&O a contraction of almost seven times of the sales in 2012 compared to 2008 (from 3.5 million to 0.5 million), but it reflects only the very low level of demand. The decrease of the entire market was even greater (about ten times, from 30 million to more than 3 million), the withdrawal of many competitors, especially those from Turkey, being a reason. Now, at national level more than a thousand machines manufactured or marketed by the German supplier are running, approximately 10% being high productivity equipment. According to Urban estimations, the market share of the company in Romania is about 30%, since over 800 new machines were traded. In the past five years, cumulative shipments of new equipment were located at a lower level than that recorded in 2008, fairly reflecting the characteristic decline of this sector. The absence of concrete information at EU level makes the accomplishment of realistic analysis difficult, but it can be estimated, with acceptable accuracy, that the field declined more than 20% in the past five years and for 2012 it is expected that the total sales in Europe cumulates less than 300 million euro.