Managing owner of the Jentner Group on his own trade fair goals and the mood at Surface Technology Germany "Low resource consumption reduces susceptibility to price increases"
Interview: Robert Piterek
What goals are you pursuing with your trade fair presence?
We want to make new contacts and publicize our new system, the digital production file, and win new customers for it. In future, we will bundle all relevant parameters for each of our products in our digital production files. To do this, the product is scanned and digitally measured, among other things. TheCO2 footprint of each production step will also be part of every digital production file. This information will become increasingly important for customers in the future with regard to climate neutrality.
A trade fair is always a source of inspiration for new trends in the industry. What have you learned so far?
That there is a great deal of interest in quality assurance and its reliable, automatic and person-independent documentation.
What other questions are currently occupying the electroplating industry?
The industry is particularly concerned with the question of how delivery problems can be resolved. For example, there are currently supply problems with chemical additives. Companies are asking themselves whether they will still be able to deliver and whether they will still be coating in six months' time in view of procurement problems and the lack of price stability.
How do you assess the development of raw material prices?
Difficult to say. It will remain exciting in any case. Resource efficiency is important. The fewer metals and chemicals electroplating companies need, the less susceptible they are to price increases. Recycling, which we also carry out in-house, is also important in this context.
Speaking of in-house. You are currently building a new digital electroplating facility at the Pforzheim site, which is the subject of a company report in this issue. Do energy and resource efficiency and recycling play a role in your new building?
The numerous digital measuring points that we will be recording and documenting for our products in our new electroplating facility will enable us to work both more transparently and more resource-efficiently. This will certainly have an advantageous effect in the future.
The new building will be completed in the fall. Where do you see the Jentner Group in five years' time?
We will be coating with precious metals in the high-quality rack sector. At the same time, every product in the process chain will be digitally traceable.
ABOUT THE PERSON
Chris Jentner
the 47-year-old entrepreneur trained as an electroplater and businessman. In 1999, he took over a 3-man electroplating shop from his father, which he expanded to around 65 employees today. Business areas include contract plating, sales of small electroplating systems and anodes as well as laboratory services such as electrolyte testing.
