Logical supplement
It had been quite obvious to everyone, says managing director Bernhard Egert: "Our first major projects in facade construction – a secondary school for higher education in Wiener Neustadt/AT and a retirement home in Hallein/AT – went quite well. As a timber engineering company we had good technical conditions." The decision for major investments over the last two years was a natural result of the rapid growth in the new division. "The first projects we more or less carved by hand", says Egert with a smile. "Our planning and sales office in Augsburg/DE, which we founded last year, benefitted from these references enormously when it came to acquiring new orders for facade construction. It was clear, we had to invest in this manufacturing sector – and we have consistently pursued just that since then." Unlike many facade engineering companies from the metal side who have little experience with wood and glass facades, Rubner being a traditional timber company is predestined for this challenge. "We know how to handle wood, and thus the post-beam facade construction is a logical supplement to timber engineering." His success proves him right: "Our facade construction division was able to achieve a total contract value in the tens of millions in just ten months."
Busy joining unit
In real terms, this implied pulling up a seperate production line: "Otherwise we would have compromised the manufacturing process of our well running timber engineering", emphasizes Weinzettl. "We do take advantage of the existing facilities for glue-laminated timber construction, though. But considering the rate at which we execute our post-beam orders now, we could virtually utilize the capacity of our Hundegger joinery machine out in the hall twice over. So the first thing Rubner did was to install another joining unit." Needless to say it was again Hundegger, Hawangen/DE, who was asked to optimize its new K2i for this purpose. It is capable of processing profile cross-sections of 20 x 50 mm to 300 x 450 mm without retooling.