The St. Martin natural stone specialist Strasser Steine turned over almost 50 million euros in the previous year. “Everything is done to break the 100 million euro mark in the next ten years,” says managing director Johannes Artmayr (report in the business section). The only thing that worries him more is the lack of skilled workers in the region. After all, the district of Rohrbach and the adjacent district of Urfahr-Surroundings are characterized by what is probably the lowest unemployment rate in Europe.
Main product natural stone
Although the company’s main focus remains on the area of natural stone kitchen worktops, Alpinova is also the world’s first recycling product in this segment, according to the company. With the expansion of the St. Martin im Mühlkreis site by 25 million euros, the production capacity was also doubled.
The company continues to benefit greatly from the current trend towards natural stone in the kitchen. With the “Re-Stoning-System”, for example, stone sections from production can now be reused. They are sorted by colour, shredded and used in combination with recycled material to produce new kitchen worktops. In the future, it is also planned that end customers will be able to return natural stone worktops that are no longer required via the dealer. This means that kitchen worktops can be put back into the production cycle at the end of their useful life: “The market launch of Alpinova has exceeded our expectations. There are already around 500 kitchens with Alpinova worktops in Austria and Germany, and demand is continuing to grow,” says Artmayr at the annual press conference. Compared to the 28,000 kitchens that were equipped with Strasser stone worktops in one year, this is still small, but products in this sector have a long lead time.
Larger production area
Since May 2021, the company has invested around 25 million in the expansion of its headquarters in the Mühlviertel, thereby doubling its production possibilities, because the majority of the investment went into the new 6500 square meter production area, which went into operation a few days ago. The new Alpinova kitchen worktops are now also being manufactured there. The most recent survey carried out by the market research institute Market on behalf of Strasser also shows that the trend towards natural stone continues to be strong: “The kitchen worktop has continued to gain in importance as an element in the kitchen, and natural stone is high on the wish list of Austrians above”, market boss Werner Beutelmeyer explains the result of the trend survey among 1004 people in Austria in February 2023.
employees wanted
Although the degree of automation was further increased as a result of the expansion, the need for personnel is also increasing: At the end of 2022, including the German location in Kösching and including apprentices, 285 people were employed at Strasser Steine, and this year 15 to 20 people are to be added again. In order to increase attractiveness, there will be a gradual switch from three to two-shift operation over the next few years. “We’re thinking of a hybrid model. The fully automated workflows could be bundled in a third shift,” says Johannes Artmayr.
