Böblingen The Zeppelin group (located in Friedrichshafen, with group headquarters in Garching near Munich) is investing around 15 euros in the Böblingen location. In the coming one and a half years, 19,000 square metres of new buildings will be created at Hanns-Klemm-Straße 16, for Zeppelin Baumaschinen GmbH. In concrete terms, there will an office building with extensive green areas, a workshop building with four service halls and a central oil supply depot as well as a further workshop building with two fitters' shops and a spare-parts warehouse. In addition, MVS Zeppelin GmbH & Co. KG, also a company of the Zeppelin group, has taken over a former car distributor directly adjoining the new buildings. This is where the Böblingen rental station of the company will move into in the next few weeks.

"The recently built branch offices and our new rental station will enable us to respond to the needs of our customers in the building industry more effectively in future", said company boss Ernst Susanek emphatically during laying of the foundation stone. "Especially in this region, large infrastructure projects are being planned or are already being realised. I refer explicitly to the large Stuttgart 21 project. By modernising and expanding this location, we are creating greater flexibility, speed and, above all, professionalism in the service of our customers."

At the Böblingen location, Zeppelin's activities are focused on sales and servicing of Caterpillar construction machines as well as one the rental of construction machines and plant., building-site and traffic safety systems, work platforms, lifts, telescopic fork-lift trucks as well as vehicles. Zeppelin has been active locally for more than 45 years now. With a land area of 23,500 square metres and due to its performance data, this branch of the company is one of the largest Zeppelin locations in Germany. The approximately 100 employees look after around 1,000 customers and an additional 1,900 interested parties from the areas of excavation, construction, demolition and recycling. In the last year alone, the branch sold almost 700 new and second-hand building machines, built-on parts and components and provided 72,200 hours of maintenance and servicing. The Böblingen branch of Zeppelin also specialises in other things such as machines for tunnel construction as well as specially manufactured equipment for specific customer requirements plus high-quality overhauling of worn parts such as scoops, excavator buckets and demolition tools.

When it conceived this new building, Zeppelin paid special attention to the issue of environmental protection. For example, the new branch has a rainwater collection system which is used for the washing hall. The latter, in turn, is equipped with a complete biological water processing unit. Warm water is provided by means of a thermal solar installation and through the use of innovative building materials. Moreover, thanks to a planning process that was especially energy-efficient, the final power consumption of the building will be around 100,000 kilowatts per hour lower than that of the reference building, which accords with the energy ID regulation (EnEV). In terms of CO2 emissions, this means an annual saving of over 20 metric tons or 16 per cent.

With around 6,000 employees at 190 locations all round the world, the Zeppelin Group achieved turnover of 2.4 billion euros in 2008 (provisional figures) and is the largest sales, servicing and rental organisation in the industry in Germany and in Europe. The company owns the Friedrichshafen Zeppelin Foundation and, in 2008, was awarded an A+ rating by Creditereform Rating AG for the fourth time in a row. These performance data were intentionally mentioned by Susanek in his speech "because I know how important it is for our customers today to have an economically and financially strong partner at their side." The lord mayor of Böblingen, Alexander Vogelgsang, Andreas Brand, 1st mayor of Böblingen and due to be lord mayor of the city of Friedrichshafen, as well as the most important customers and employees of the Zeppelin branch in Böblingen were invited to the foundation-stone laying ceremony.

Source:
ZEPPELIN GmbH
Arantxa Dörrié
Press spokesperson, head of Corporate Communication
Tel. 0 89/ 320 00-440, Fax 0 89/ 320 00-500
E-mail: Presse@zeppelin.com