Oerlikon Balzers

Oerlikon Balzers

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Type	Public (SIX: OERL)
Industry	Industrial engineering and manufacturing
Founded	1946 as Gerätebauanstalt Balzers
Headquarters	Balzers, Liechtenstein
Key people	Bernd Fischer, Head of Business Unit
Products	Surface technologies
Revenue	511 million CHF (2013)
Number of employees	3278 (2013)
Website	www.oerlikon.com/balzers

Oerlikon Balzers is a part of the OC Oerlikon group, a Swiss technology conglomerate, and a supplier of PVD coatings. The OC Oerlikon group consists of companies in the following industries: textile, drive systems, vacuum technologies, solar, coating and advanced technologies. The coatings produced by Oerlikon Balzers aim to improve the performance and service life of, for example, metallic precision components by reducing friction and supplying additional hardness.

History

With the support of Prince Franz Josef II and Swiss industrialist Emil Georg Bührle, Professor Max Auwärter founded Gerätebauanstalt Balzers. The objective was to make the then largely unknown and little-researched vacuum thin film technology usable on an industrial scale. Since no systems and equipment for the production of thin-film coatings were available at the time, the company developed and produced them in-house. The first popular applications were sun protection and anti-reflection coatings for ophthalmic lenses, anti-reflection coatings for camera lenses, optical filters and reflectors and thin films for electronic applications.

In 1976, the company became a member of the Oerlikon Group, then Oerlikon-Bührle Holding AG. In 1983, the first coating center was opened outside of Liechtenstein in Italy. One year later, the step to America was taken, and in 1987, the first center in the Asian region took on its operation in Japan.

In June 2014, the OC Oerlikon Group acquired Sulzer Metco from the Swiss Sulzer AG [link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulzer_(manufacturer)], which has since then been operating under the name Oerlikon Metco. The thin film business of Oerlikon Metco is integrated into Oerlikon Balzers since 2015. Together, the two companies form the "Surface Solutions Segment" of the Oerlikon Group.

In early 2015, Oerlikon Balzers operated over 100 coating centers in more than 30 countries, and reported sales of CHF 511 million Swiss Francs, generated by more than 3,500 employees.

Liechtenstein Oerlikon Balzers continues to use Liechtenstein as its headquarters, and is currently located in Balzers, where over 700 people are employed.

Other business units of OC

• Drive system
• Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum
• Oerlikon Solar
• Advanced technologies