German Industry Award for Cpro fan from Ziehl-Abegg

The fan constructor Ziehl-Abegg received the "Best of 2013" award in the area of Production Technology & Mechanical Engineering during the 2013 Industry Awards. The Industry Award honours the most advanced companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland which provide especially high ecological, economical and technological benefits.

More than 1,200 companies applied for the prize in 2013. The prize is awarded mutually by Huber Verlag für Neue Medien (a publishing house) and the Initiative Mittelstand (an SMB initiative). The Künzelsau industrial company participated in the competition for the first time and presented the 30-man jury an energy-saving fan in bionic design. It impressed the judges greatly, meaning that it was short-listed and eventually won, in a group comprising more than 1,200 submitted applications.

The form of a water droplet provided the developers at Ziehl-Abegg with the ideal shape for constructing fans that run quietly and that need distinctly less energy than conventional products. The problem was that due to the enormously high loads, until then it was only possible to manufacture fan impellers using metal. Trials at the start of the century with plastics failed because the plastic was not able to withstand the tip speeds of up to 70 meters per second (circumferential speed). So the chemists managed to develop a composite material (ZAmid) which allows the technical implementation of the ideal form of a fan impeller. Even during manufacturing process, the new material consumes significantly less energy than that required for comparable steel fans. That the new composite material is 100% recyclable fits perfectly into the concept of sustainability.

Ziehl-Abegg managed to put together a total package in which the new material is unified with bionic insights: Material characteristics similar to steel, combined with optimised shapes. That achievement lets the air glide through with nearly no resistance. The Cpro fan impeller is full of promise for the future in two respects: on the one hand because of the reduced resource and energy consumption during manufacturing, on the other because of the 15-percent lower power consumption during operation. So the market – also in the interest of savings during on-going operations – readily received the product.

Ziehl-Abegg (Künzelsau, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) is one of the leading global companies in the ventilation and drive technology sector with matching control technology. Examples of application areas for the products include heating and refrigeration plant, clean rooms and agricultural systems. Ziehl-Abegg set the standard for modern fan drives already back in the fifties; external rotor motors that today continue to be state of the art worldwide. Another sector is electric motors, for example, which provide the drive in elevators, medical applications (computer tomography) or in deep-sea underwater vehicles. The topic of electromobility in road traffic applications was placed into the hands of the Ziehl-Abegg Automotive GmbH team in 2012. Sales and further improvement of a wheel-hub drive, which is already being used in several countries, are being developed there.

The high-tech company provides 1,750 employees with jobs in South German production plants. Worldwide, 3,150 employees work for the company. They are spread out globally across 8 production facilities and 7 assembly sites along with the company's own sales offices in 32 countries. The approximately 30,000 products are sold in more than 100 countries. Sales in 2012 were 371 million euros. Two-thirds of the sales are achieved through export.

Emil Ziehl founded the company in 1910 in Berlin as a manufacturer of electric motors. After the Second World War, the company headquarters was relocated to South Germany. Ziehl-Abegg AG is not quoted on the stock market and is family owned.

Ziehl-Abegg AG
Rainer Grill
Heinz-Ziehl-Straße 1
74653 Kuenzelsau
Telephone +49 7940 16-0
E-Mail: info@ziehl-abegg.de

This release was published on openPR.