HB Munters Group (MNB) Integration: The Story So Far…

It’s 84 days since HB Group joined our family so time for an update.... and also watch a video clip on HB Krako in the Czech Republic.

The acquisition is developing in line with all parties' expectations, so HB Munters Group (MNB) is on track to contribute to Air Treatment's industrial growth plans. 1+1=3 is the watchword, including two large orders from Danone.

There is a detailed plan with 10 defined teams working on various areas of business integration from segment and product management through to purchasing and finance. As you can imagine there is a lot going on at a frantic pace. Sales and commercial integration remain the key driver and we are being careful not to overwhelm the teams at Almelo and HB Krako so that customer related work stays front of house. We are also reviewing the quotation and engineering processes in readiness for dealing with more internal customers from the business units.

The training and knowledge share for the first five Business Units selected for proactive selling (MDK, MFR, MGD, MNL, MUK ) happened this month, hosted at HB Krako by Rostislav Pazderka and his team. It was a very positive meeting with some great opportunities developing (more to follow at a later date). We have already had our first joint sales visit to a key account by Annamarrie Lennings and Marcel van den Berghe in Denmark, which was well received by the customer.

Some of the Team from BU Knowledge Share Meeting 1 with a 4.5m rotor system

Sander Hielkema and Folke Meyer looking at an HB Drive System

Bente Nielsen from HB presenting to the BU teams

There are also ongoing reactive enquiries for large projects in places such as China, Australia and India. We are starting to share leads/intelligence with other Business Units. This process will gather pace and, in due course, a roll-out plan for more territories will be announced – in the meantime we will take any targets of opportunity, so keep in touch.

Service team meetings have also started (this is also based on a roll-out plan starting with selected Business Units) and we are reviewing the HB Munters Group installed base to develop that opportunity.

Eric Bonvaine, Sebastian Leichtnam and Matthew Reynolds at Almelo for the initial service meeting

Rene Denekamp and Laurens de Graaf from HB meet with the European Service Managers in Kista

ICT have also been busy. Many of the HB Munters staff have a Munters World profile/full Munters World access and there is already a Munters guest network at Almelo (one to follow shortly at HB Krako). A video link is also working at Almelo.

Per Brandt Shows Eric Bonvanie and Jan Bednarik the Almelo Video system linking to Munters China

We have some very interesting ongoing R&D work but that is subject to an NDA for now – some of the Almelo team will be visiting the USA in October to follow up on that work.

They say pictures and videos paint a thousand words and this is a people process so I have included a few photos. After the video clip with a short impression of HB Almelo that was published some weeks back, we now have a video impression of the HB Krako production facility in Hrusky, Czech Republic. Have a look here....

Click to view the movie

It is worth remembering that we started this process in the summer holidays so many people were off in both companies. However, HB Munters Group (MNB) already feels like part of the team and strong links are developing with, of course, some great potential sales and ongoing key account development.

Please contact Alan Bessant or Eric Bonvanie if you have any questions or sales opportunities.

Alan Bessant.