Weiler Werkzeugmaschinen GmbH

On 12 March, as part of the joint FRU project Industrial Ramstein, we visited one of Germany's leading manufacturers of lathes – Weiler Werkzeugmaschinen GmbH. Like many other German machine-tool builders, the company is a family-owned enterprise with a long history – Weiler began production back in 1938.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the company actively started expanding into foreign markets: in 2000 it acquired a Czech machine-tool plant in Holoubkov (which now also produces drilling machines) and in 2016 – the well-known milling machine manufacturer Kunzmann.

Today, the company has offices worldwide, and most importantly for us – it is also represented in Ukraine. Weiler is well acquainted with our market, continues to increase supplies to Ukraine, and fully services its equipment in the country despite the war.

At the Emskirchen plant, around 300 employees are involved in machine-tool production. Here we also met Ukrainians working on site. The plant has its own training programme – in Germany these professions are very popular among young people, and the vast majority of graduates stay on to work at the factory.

We see enormous potential for cooperation with this company. We exchanged contacts, discussed the equipment models that interest our enterprises most, presented the Industrial Ramstein initiative, and secured the management’s support for jointly promoting it together with FRU, German industry associations, and manufacturers. Only by combining our capabilities will we be able to modernise Ukrainian industry using high-quality equipment.

In implementing the initiative, we are supported by our reliable long-term partners – the ILO – within the framework of the Belgian Government Project “ILO Support to Ukraine: Preventing Labour Exploitation and Trafficking in Persons, Supporting Entrepreneurship Development and Institutional Support to Social Partners”.