Bauer AG
BAUER Aktiengesellschaft is a stock-market-listed construction and machinery manufacturing concern based in Schrobenhausen in Upper Bavaria, Germany.
Type | Aktiengesellschaft |
---|---|
FWB: B5A | |
Industry | Construction, engineering |
Founded | 1790 |
Headquarters | Schrobenhausen, Germany |
Key people | Thomas Bauer (CEO and chairman of the management board), Klaus Reinhardt (Chairman of the supervisory board) |
Products | Foundation engineering and construction; machinery and equipment for foundation engineering, mining and environmental technology |
Revenue | €1,589.1 million (2018)[1] |
Number of employees | 12,000 (average, 2018)[1] |
Website | www.bauer.de |
Bauer is a leader in the execution of complex excavation pits, foundations and vertical seals, as well as in the development and manufacture of related machinery for this dynamic market. The Group also uses its expertise in the exploration, mining and safeguarding of valuable natural resources. In 2018, the companies of the BAUER Group employed some 12,000 people in around 70 countries and achieved total Group revenues of EUR 1.7 billion.
History
In 1790, Sebastian Bauer (acting under the name Paur) from Deggendorf, son of a coppersmith family in the prior generation from Osterhofen (Lower Bavaria), took on a coppersmith's shop in Schrobenhausen.[2] For over a century, the coppersmith's shop participated in the establishment of breweries, performed roofing work with copper and manufactured objects for everyday household use.
In 1902, Andreas Bauer drilled an artesian well for the new railway station water house[3] in Schrobenhausen, which would make well-drilling a new business segment of the company. For his son Karl Bauer, the construction of the central water supply for the city of Schrobenhausen in 1928 was a key project. It was with this reference that he switched operations toward those of a well-drilling company and would soon become active with building wells and water supply facilities for cities and industrial enterprises all over Bavaria.
Karlheinz Bauer, born in 1928 and company shareholder since 1953, became the sole managing director in 1956 and switched operations to specialist foundation engineering. Two years later followed the invention of the ground anchor (injection anchor) on the construction site of the Bayerischer Rundfunk building in Munich. The company then applied for a patent on the construction procedure and began to market it internationally. The first overseas construction site was in Switzerland in 1959. The ground anchor was used here too, thus beginning its success story. In the 1960s, the construction procedure was primarily used in subway construction in numerous cities throughout the German Federal Republic.
In 1969, the company began designing and constructing an anchor drilling rig and in so doing took its first step toward becoming a machinery manufacturer. In 1975, the company received its first contracts in Libya, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the subsequent period, Bauer Spezialtiefbau continued to expand its construction activities and equipment sales to more countries. From the mid-1980s, it had established new focal areas in the Far East.
In 1976, the BG 7 heavy-duty rotary drilling rig was added to the machinery portfolio. Over the decades that followed, the BG range would develop into the core area of the Bauer Maschinenbau corporation. In 1984, it would develop and construct its own trench cutter. Two years later, Thomas Bauer – who had been part of the company since 1984 – became the sole managing director.[4] Under his leadership, the internationalization of the BAUER Group in the machinery manufacturing and specialist foundation engineering sectors took place.
In 1990, BAUER und MOURIK Umwelttechnik GmbH & Co. was founded. After 2002, with the acquisition of FWS Filter- und Wassertechnik GmbH, BAUER Umwelt GmbH emerged. In 1992, the Thuringian company Schachtbau Nordhausen GmbH was acquired. The year before, together with Schachtbau Nordhausen, the subsidiary SPESA Spezialbau und Sanierung GmbH was founded.
In 1994, BAUER Aktiengesellschaft was founded as a holding company, whereby Deutsche Beteiligungs AG received shares of BAUER AG due to a capital increase in 1996. In 2001, with the restructuring, the BAUER Group was brought into being. BAUER Maschinen GmbH with the companies Klemm Bohrtechnik, MAT Mischanlagentechnik, RTG Rammtechnik, Eurodrill, TracMec and PILECO, became an independent operator on the market. On July 4, 2006, BAUER AG went public. On April 20, 2007, the company acquired German Water and Energy GmbH (GWE), and in so doing successfully expanded its commercial activities to include well technology, water and geothermal energy. The company's entire market presence was reorganized into the three main segments construction, equipment and resources.
In the two years that followed, the machinery manufacturing plants in Aresing, Nordhausen, Tianjin (China) and Shanghai were expanded, and a new plant with over 34,000 m² of hall space was opened in Edelshausen as was a new machinery manufacturing plant in Conroe (Texas, USA).
In 2010, cutter technology celebrated its 25-year anniversary, and the biggest plant-based purification facility in the world to date was completed in Oman by Bauer Resources.[5] During the course of 2012, the company exceeded the 10,000 employees worldwide mark for the first time.
Contracts for foundation work on what would become the tallest building in the world (Kingdom Tower) and the tallest building in Europe (Lakhta Center) followed, as did the completion of the company's largest specialist foundation engineering contract in Germany to date in 2014: the Schwarzkopf Tunnel bypass railway project in Spessart.
In 2015, Bauer celebrated its 225-year anniversary and the largest individual order of the company's history was won in the form of the Kesselgrube renovation project in the environmental sector. In 2017, the contract for the expansion of the plant-based purification facility completed in 2010 in Oman followed.
Bauer is the global market leader for the manufacture of the entire machinery portfolio for specialist foundation engineering.[6] The company has numerous prestigious foundation projects on its CV, such as the Burj Khalifa or the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.
Group structure
The Group's business is divided into three segments: Construction, Equipment and Resources. The Construction segment carries out specialist foundation engineering work all over the world, developing foundation and excavation projects as well as providing related construction services. In its Equipment segment, in which it is the world market leader, Bauer offers an extensive range of machinery, equipment and tools for specialist foundation engineering. The Resources segment encompasses the Group's operations in the extraction and production of raw materials, in environmental technology, in geothermal energy and also in materials for well drilling and well engineering (including pumps and drilling techniques, screens and casings).
The Group has numerous subsidiaries, including Schachtbau Nordhausen.
Special construction methods
The companies of the Group has been a major driving force in the development of various construction methods for specialist foundation engineering. The well-known methods include:
- Diaphragm walls|Diaphragm wall
- Sheet piles
- Soldier pile walls
- Anchor techniques
- Depth vibrators
- Jet Grouting
- Permeation Grouting
- Ground Improvement
- CSV soil stabilization
- The mixed-in-place (MIP) process
- Cutter soil mixing (CSM method)
- Prestressed micropiles
- Ductile piles
Literature
- Franz Josef Mayer (editor): Bauer – Geschichte und Geschichten. Publisher Ballas, 2006, ISBN 978-3000185182
- Erwin Stötzer, Manfred Schöpf, Franz Josef Mayer, Klaus Englert: Spezialtiefbau – Festschrift zum 80.Geburtstag von Karlheinz Bauer. Publisher Ballas, 2008
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bauer AG. |
References
- "Annual Report 2017" (PDF). Bauer Group. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 12, 2018. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
- http://www.bauer.de/bauer_group/bauer_group/history/
- Mayer, S. 34
- http://www.bauer.de/bauer_group/bauer_group/organs/management_board/
- http://www.bauer.de/bauer_group/bauer-news/Pflanzen-gegen-Erdoel-BAUER-Gruppe-errichtet-weltgroesste-kommerzielle-Schilfklaeranlage/
- Florian Langenscheidt, Bernd Venohr (Hrsg.): Lexikon der deutschen Weltmarktführer. Die Königsklasse deutscher Unternehmen in Wort und Bild. Deutsche Standards Editionen, Köln 2010, ISBN 978-3-86936-221-2.