Dennert Poraver GmbH builds third plant in Schlüsselfeld

Poraver expanded glass granulate is a lightweight aggregate for quality building materials and industrial products. Due to the wide range of applications in various industries, the demand of Poraver in recent years has been growing steadily. Already in 2014 the production capacity of the plant in Postbauer-Heng has been extended by a fifth production line to annually 240,000 m³. The new plant in the immediate vicinity of the Poraver head office will expand its market leadership position of the company as the world’s largest manufacturer of expanded glass granulate in the long term.

By planning measures Dennert Poraver GmbH also benefits the region. At the scheduled start-up in 2019 40 new employees in production and logistics are set at the new production site, in the long term more than 100 employees will find their jobs at the new plant. The importance of innovative products is underlined by the construction of a new laboratory for application engineering and by another new laboratory for research and development.

Photo: David Veit Krafft (left) and Matthias Gebhardt of the Executive Management of Dennert Poraver GmbH would like to implement their plans and build a third factory for expanded glass granulate on this land. The premises of the Pröls company and ADAC are visible in the background. Photo by Andreas Dorsch

Translation:

New factory commences operations with a workforce of 40

There is a boom in the demand for expanded glass granulate. For Dennert Poraver GmbH, based in Schlüsselfeld, this is the incentive for constructing a third production facility. The company plans to build this in its home territory, where only the administration is currently located.

Schlüsselfeld – The smaller the pieces of glass that the medium-sized family-run company Dennert Poraver GmbH gets, the better. “We turn it into a premium product,” says management coordinator David Veit Krafft. Since there is a large demand for this premium product worldwide, the company would like to expand and set up a third factory in Schlüsselfeld.

The company has just purchased 30,000 square meters of land in the industrial zone not far from ADAC’s driving safety center. As CEO Matthias Gebhardt explains, a production facility for expanded glass granulate will be set up on the land. This new factory is meant to go into production in the year 2019 with a workforce of 40 employees.

Gebhardt and Krafft are considering production capacity of 160,000 cubic meters per year of a product that will be processed in high-quality building materials and other industrial products. The number of workplaces shall be expanded to a hundred in the new factory at Schlüsselfeld in the long term.

Hans Veit Dennert is the owner of the company, which he established back in 1983. The administration and sales departments have been located in Schlüsselfeld since then, and the production facilities are located in the main factory in Postbauer-Heng and, since 2007, in another factory near Toronto, Canada. The market in Canada and the USA shall be served from there. With its total workforce of 120, the company is, by its own account, the worldwide market leader for the production of expanded glass granulate. With the new production facility in Schlüsselfeld, the company aims to expand its total capacity to 500,000 cubic meters annually. According to CEO Gebhardt, production in Schlüsselfeld is also planned round the clock with three-shift operation. Metalworkers and electricians shall also be required for this purpose, in addition to the shift workers. In order to continue its success in the market, the company is setting up two additional laboratories for the field of Application Technology and for Research and Development.

Expanded glass granulate is a material that is generally incorporated into other products. The granules are present in various plasters, tile adhesives, facade elements, lightweight concrete, and mineral composites as well as paints and wallpapers and even in the automotive sector. “The glass is ground, granulated, dried, and expanded,” as CEO Gebhardt describes in a nutshell what happens in the factories. The product offered in various grain sizes can, however, be refined even further. Incidentally, recycled or waste glass is used as the raw material – even from bottle banks. Glass shards are preferred, which are already too small for melting down.