The machines at the site are to be modernized by the end of 2022. The 570 employees should keep their jobs.
The Styrian Mayr-Melnhof Karton will invest 100 million euros in the renewal of the Frohnleiten site north of Graz over the next two years. CEO Peter Oswald announced this on Friday at an online press conference. The money flows primarily into the digitization and effectiveness of the existing machines. All of the 570 employees should keep their jobs, Oswald assured. Production is expected to increase by around 10 percent.
“Historical”
“This is the largest investment that the MM Group has ever made in Austria. It is courageous and historic in a difficult market environment,” said Oswald. The investment will secure the location and the existing jobs. New jobs are unlikely to be added, but the modernization should make things easier for employees. At the Hirschwang location in Lower Austria, however, job cuts were only announced at the beginning of November.
With its investment premium, the federal government supports the project in Frohnleiten with EUR 4.4 million, Oswald said when asked. Economics Minister Margarete Schramböck (ÖVP) described MM Karton as a “prime example” for companies that are crisis-proof and do not leave their investment plans in the drawer in times of Corona. For the investment premium made available by the federal government, around 53,000 applications with a volume of around 22 billion euros have already been submitted, she said at the press conference. More than half of the applications deal with the topics of sustainability and digitization.
new technologies
The planned investments in Frohnleiten are primarily intended to reduce water and energy consumption in waste paper processing. New production technologies in cardboard manufacture are intended to increase product quality and capacities as a prerequisite for further possible uses of recycled cardboard. The logistics area is also being modernized in order to accelerate the movement of goods.
According to its own statements, the MM Group is Europe's largest cardboard and folding box producer. More than 1.7 million tons of cardboard are produced annually, a third of them at the Frohnleiten site. The MM Group employs around 10,000 people worldwide, around 1,800 of them in Austria.
