With 4500 Staff Worldwide Leonhard Kurz Stiftung Amp Co Kg Is The World Market Leader Of Hot Stamping Technology Starting With The Decorative Processing Of Gold Leaf The Fuerthbased Family Enterprise Has Grown Over Four Generations And Become A Global Player Offering Decorative And Functional Foils Including The Associated Processing Machines That Are In Demand In Many Industrial Sectors In A Conversation Walter Kurz Who Manages The Company Together With His Brother Peter Explains The Development And The Plans Of The Companymr Kurz Can You Introduce Your Company In Just A Few Wordswalter Kurz My Great Grandfather Started In 1899 With The Production And Processing Of Leaf Gold For The Decorative Enhancement Of Books Pencils Or Hats For Easier Handling He Began To Apply The Sensitive Leaf Gold To Paper Substrates Coated With Beeswax And Egg White And To Use Hot Stamping Dies He Industrialised The Process In 1931 My Grandfather Konrad Kurz Went One Step Further Asked By Regional Mirror Manufacturers He Explored Sputtering And Vapour Plating In A Vacuum Which Resulted In The Option To Apply Also Real Gold In The Vapour Plating Process After The War Real Gold Was Substituted By Aluminium Vapour Plating With Subsequent Coating This Reduced The Cost So That Greeting Cards Packaging Materials And Labels Could Be Enhanced As Wellthe Industrialised Process Opened New Marketskurz Hellip At The End Of The 60s Decoration By Hot Foil Stamping On Plastic Material Was Added Wood Decors On Tv Sets Metal Stripes On Radios First Applications In The Automotive Industry In The 70s The Plastics Industry Gained The Upper Hand Over The Graphics Industry For Us Another Market Came Into Being In The Security Field Magnetized Hot Stamping Foils For Savings Bank Books And Signature Foils For Credit Cards Soon Visually Discernible Hot Stamping Foils For Passports Visa And Banknotes Came Into Use Since The 1960s My Father Was Keen To Strengthen Our Internationalization Since 1971 We Have Had Sales Offices In Japan And Australia As Well As A Production Site In The Usa Now We Also Have Facilities In Malaysia And Chinathe Markets And The Demands Of The Customers Are Changing How Do You Tackle Thiskurz We Continuously Improve Our Technologies We Have Supplemented Our Hot Foil Stamping Processes With Cold Foil Transfer There Uv Curing Adhesives Are Used For Offset Printing At Present We Also Press Ahead With Digital Printing For The Application Of Metallic Effects We Transfer Foils Onto Glass And Plastic Containers And We Process Functional Foils For Touch Panels And Sensors Now The Fifth Generation Of Our Family Is Keen To Join The Management Ndash So We Have Good Reasons To Look For And Into Future Technologiesdo You Combine The Development Of Foils Machines And Toolskurz We Build Application Machines For Our Customers And In Addition Machines To Produce Our Own Foil This Began In The 1950s Already With The Vapour Plating Cabinets Now We Build Big Gravure Printing Machines And Buy Machines From Other Manufacturers Only Occasionally We Also Develop And Produce Coatings Kurz Is Known As One Of The Biggest Manufacturers Producing Coatings For Their Own Need In The South Of Germanywhat Is The Reason For This Extraordinarily Large Number Of Production Levelskurz Our Knowhow Focuses On The Handling Of Extremely Thin Layers In The Microm Range The Thickness Of Our Films Is Mostly Between 6 And 40 Microm In Some Cases We Also Process Layers In The Submicrom Range We Develop The Coatings Foils Production And Application Machines On Our Own In Order To Be Able To Shape And Optimise The Processes This Also Protects Us Against The Growing Global Competition In China Alone There Are 200 Manufacturers In Our Segment And We Are Among The Top 5 Therewhich Portion Of Sales Is Achieved With Machinery Manufacturingkurz Between One Tenth And One Fifth But Its Importance Is Bigger The Reason Is That Many Customers Want Solutions From One Source They Do Not Buy Machine After Machine But They Consistently Rely On Our Foils And Retrofit With Our Machines As Necessity Arisesthe Digitalization Accelerates The Competition Of The Different Processes Ndash Lasers Are Gaining Ground In Your Key Markets As Wellkurz In Some Cases We Too Use Them For Printing On Our Foils Especially Product Marking And The Application Of Security Features Against Product Piracy Show A Most Dynamic Development Favourable Processes Push Into The Market We Are Working On Solutions Using Holograms On Packages And Apps That Make Communication Between The End Customers And The Manufacturers Easier For This Reason We Have Taken Over The Software Company Adorsys We Must Continue To Progress In Order To Hold Our Groundthe Whole Printing And Paper Technology Manufacturing Industry Is Faced With This Challenge How Do You See The Future Of This Industrykurz For A Company That Used To Think In Analogue Worlds Its Not Easy To Accumulate Digital Knowhow Individualization Software And Digitalization Are The Crucial Catchwords Ndash The Graphics Industry Is Changing Radicallywhat Are The Effects On Kurzkurz Our Three Major Columns With Comparable Sales Portions Are The Graphics Industry Plastics Decoration In The Electronics Medical Technology Or The Automobile Sectors As Well As The Security Of Banknotes And Credit Cards Including Counterfeitproof Concert Tickets The Graphics Industry Is And Will Continue To Be Our Backbone We Are Lucky That We Are Active In Fields Like Packaging Labels And Security Foils That Are Not As Much Affected As The Printing Technology Itself However We Are On Guard Global Success Cannot Be Taken For Granted Considering The Speed At Which The Markets Are Changingkurz Is Often Active At Interfaces Between The Digital And The Analogue World How Does That Change Your Companykurz The Customer Relations From Inventory Management To The Closer Exchange Of Parameters And The Harmonization Of Interfaces Are Changing We Pay Close Attention To The New Process World With Our Subsidiary Polyic We Develop Foils And Coatings For Touch Screens And Sensor For That We Partly Need To Make Major Modifications In Our Processes However We Have Already Received First Orders From Mobile Manufacturers In The Pacific Region And Already Manufacture Touch Sensors In The Field Of White Goods These Are Encouraging Signals After Twelve Long Years Of Investments We Still See Many Applications Above All In The Touch Segment We Are In The Process Of Shaping The Digital Change With New Products And Technologieswhat Can The Printing And Paper Technology Industry Learn From Your Examplekurz When I Look At The Ldquoprint2030 Workshopsrdquo That Took Place Under The Roof Of The Vdma I Think That The Industry Is Steering The Right Course Because The Companies Are Actively Looking For Ways To Stand Their Ground In The Digitalized World There Are Downsizing Processes Going On Now But Those Who Make Proper Preparations Will Find Other Chances Of Growth