Details

January 2020

Another successful year: Staff of employees grew by one fifth in 2019

2019 was another prosperous year for Hjerno Tool Factory.

The number of employees grew by 18 per cent to just over 60 employees, and growth continued in 2019 as in previous years.

Thus, Denmark's largest tool factory continued its journey from a medium to a large-size factory, which, in addition to tool manufacturing, offers a wealth of in-house services rendered as consultancy, technical sparring, flow analyses, production optimisations in the moulding process and much more.

“We do not want to be big just for the sake of being big - but because we wish to be able to meet the demands from our customers. We can see that large tool factories like ours are needed, because today we must be able to deliver an incredible number of services that lie beyond original tool making,” says Managing Director Aage Agergaard.

Ambition: Twice as big in five years

As a result of last year's multi-million investment from the Danish equity fund of Vækstpartner Kapital, which now owns 2/3 of the company, Hjerno Tool Factory has launched an ambition to double its size within five years. An ambition, which still looks extremely realistic based on 2019, Aage Agergaard believes.

“Well, there is talk of a general downturn in the industry, but we are not nervous at all. We trust our concept 100 per cent and we are sure there is room in the market for further growth. Not least because we are so lucky to work with some very powerful customers, who are also leaders in their field”.

Significant investment in new IT

Vækstpartner Kapital’s investment in Hjerno Tool Factory will in the coming years be used for further expansion of the capacity and improvement of the delivery reliability - for example through investments in both new technology and a strengthened organisation.

One of the very big investments in 2020 is an IT order flow system, which will be customised for Hjerno Tool Factory. A Danish-German software development company is in charge of further developing the system, which was put into service last year, and which aims to ensure high efficiency in production and optimal utilisation of the machine capacity.

The system must, above all, create the overall overview and progress of all the many, many tool parts and deliveries of production-ready tools that are constantly being handled in the production.

“It's a really big investment in new software, actually in the millions, and it's something we spend a lot of time on. Exactly because we can see that high delivery reliability and time-to-market are crucial parameters for our customers,” says Aage Agergaard.