GARANT am Erfurter Kreuz is an attractive employer for students, young professionals and experienced professionals. The plant in Ichtershausen offers interesting positions in a wide range of fields, from manual labour to office work.
The Thüringer Allgemeine recently reported on us. The article contains the latest news about us and perhaps one or two arguments in favour of starting your career at GARANT.
Door production at GARANT at Erfurter Kreuz is working at full capacity. Currently 535 employees.
Ichtershausen. The corona crisis has also had consequences for the production of door specialist GARANT at Erfurter Kreuz. A task force has been set up to respond to the new challenges on a daily basis, confirms Sales Manager Ralf Niebur.
A shower container for fitters and lorry drivers, face masks, disinfectant and a home office for employees were quickly organised. And it all worked smoothly, assures Niebur: "No partner or customer was aware of our measures".
Thanks to advancing digitalisation and fast internet, the otherwise regular business trips to the partner company in the Eifel are now easily replaced by video conferences, and work is paperless and "greener", Niebur reports on the positive consequences of the crisis for the company.
Despite this, the company - which was the first at Erfurter Kreuz in 1991 - is continuing its growth trajectory of recent years. "We are investing around ten million euros in production again this year," confirms plant manager Dirk Wöllner. Two new machines are already in the start-up phase.
The doors from Ichtershausen are supplied to specialist retailers throughout Europe, around a third are manufactured specifically to customer requirements, while the others can be shipped from the company's own warehouse in the shortest possible time - an advantage over competitors, as Wöllner assures us.
What began with 63 employees has developed over the years into a plant that currently employs 535 people, and GARANT is still on the lookout for skilled labour and has been training young people itself for years, says Wöllner.
They are "very, very happy" about the successful development of the Thuringian subsidiary, confirms Claudius Moor, Managing Director and Division Head of the Swiss parent company Arbonia, based in Arbon on Lake Constance. According to Moor, the purchase of the Thuringian company was one of the first decisions made in 2016 by the new Chairman of the Arbonia Board of Directors Alexander von Witzleben, who is still known to the Thuringians from his time as Jenoptik CEO.
Since the takeover, the company has invested tens of millions of euros annually in the site at Erfurter Kreuz and has now also secured a plot of land there from the state development company. This is available for further expansion of production.
The Thuringian plant is currently working at full capacity, manufacturing in three shifts and sometimes even running extra shifts at weekends, according to Moor. Demand for doors and frames - which are also manufactured in Ichterhausen - remains high at present.
In times of low interest rates, own properties are in demand as investments. If the order lead time in normal times is four to six weeks, it is currently almost twelve weeks. GARANT's production lines at Erfurter Kreuz produce 3300 doors and 2800 frames every day. Moor explained that the expansion of the new capacities and the increased automation of processes is also intended to reduce the workload for employees.
Many thanks to our guest author Bernd Jentsch for this article!