Groundbreaking ceremony: GEZE starts construction of a new development centre

On 20 June 2016, the groundbreaking ceremony for a new, highly innovative development centre took place at the GEZE head office in Leonberg. GEZE is investing ten million euro in a new building with a total area of 2,300 square metres. Completion is planned for the first half of 2017.

Investment in Research and Development

The symbolic ceremony was attended by the corporate management, the Mayor of the City of Leonberg, and the CEO of the construction company Wilhelm Geiger GmbH & Co. KG. The new development centre paves the way for further developing the performance portfolio with innovative, interconnected system solutions for doors and windows; The controls for complete building technology in ‘Smart Buildings’ is one of the markets where GEZE will expand business in the future. The new building itself will also be a Smart Building. All the workings within the new building will be intelligently connected. It will thus also serve as a platform for developments, with the aim of gaining experience of GEZE solutions working with other product groups.

The initial groundbreaking ceremony for the new development centre at the GEZE headquarters in Leonberg was attended by Pius Geiger, Managing Director of general contractor Wilhelm Geiger GmbH & Co. KG, Marc Alber, Managing Director Technology, Sandra Daniela Alber, CEO, Bernhard Schuler, the Lord Mayor of Leonberg and Florian Birkenmayer, Managing Director Development.

A ‘Creative area’ provides scope for ideas

Alongside state-of-the-art facilities for the entire spectrum of development tasks, the four-storey terraced building will also accommodate an in-house ‘creative area’. GEZE has long recognised that desks are not the only birthplace of great ideas, and is planning from the outset to devote some of the engineering capacity in the research and development area to experimenting with and testing new ideas.

"New developments are what drive our company. Innovations and new products safeguard the future and our company's international growth, as well as our position as a globalmarket leader in our field. The product development and management sectors are essentially responsible for GEZE's innovative strengths. We are creating the best conditions for them. Intensive research and development activities, and the steady optimisation of our product development process in an increasingly large and complex building technology market, have forced us to expand our development capacity," says Florian Birkenmayer, Managing Director Development.

Commitment to the town of Leonberg

Together with the new development centre, GEZE has invested around 24 million euro in constructing and expanding buildings, state-of-the-art technological facilities, and manufacturing and logistics systems in Germany since 2010. The new development centre is an addition to the international production network, which was expanded last year to include a state-of-the-art production hall. The new building is further confirmation of the GEZE site in Germany as a major development and production site. Equally, it serves as an acknowledgement for the city of Leonberg, and the Mayor expressed his special thanks to the company in his welcoming speech for being the largest employer in the city.