HOLZMA Plattenaufteiltechnik GmbH has been world market leader in horizontal beam saws for years and looks back on more than four decades of technology in progress.
The success story started with Erwin Jenkner, who founded the company in 1966. When he had the name HOLZMA registered it was already a household name among window manufacturers – not yet for saws but certainly for machines for drilling, routing and inserting fittings as used in the manufacturing of composite windows. This was the case because Erwin Jenkner, then a self-employed sales representative, had already been having various special-purpose machines built according to his ideas and specifications since the mid 1950s. With them, he complemented the portfolio of frame presses and sanding machines he sold.
Eventually, the first series-production machine was sold under the name of HOLZMA: the model "41 S" for manufacturing composite windows was developed in 1965. More than a thousand of these machines were built by the company Pfluka in Ofterdingen.
Erwin Jenkner's dream of manufacturing his machines himself came true in 1967 when the first horizontal saw with saw unit running underneath the table was built. This first horizontal saw was produced with the help of just two employees in a rented bus garage in Gechingen, near Calw in the Black Forest, and was intended mainly for cutting solid wood. It was already equipped with a hydraulic drive system.
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Faster than the competition
A growing demand for saws capable of cutting melamine-laminated chipboard chip-free and to tight tolerances soon emerged. This led to the second generation of HOLZMA saws being designed - in the attic of a residential house in Gechingen. Detlef Jenkner, son of the company founder, was responsible for the new development. He was completing a degree in mechanical engineering in Constance at the time – and had already taken on the design work of the small company. Then in 1970 the first panel-sizing saw with pressure beam and electronically-controlled lateral positioning fence rolled out of the company. From then on, HOLZMA equipped all saws with a scoring unit, which was ajustable horizontally and vertically from the outside.
In the years that followed the company grew faster and faster. For this reason, the main office of the company was transferred from Gechingen to Holzbronn in 1971. At the new location, eight employees produced panel-sizing saws for the world market on an initial area of 1500 m².
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HOLZMA set standards worldwide
In the very same year the first system for cutting strips was supplied to England. It already included a fully-automatic destacking system for the cut books. One year later, the company booked its first order for an angular saw system. Numerous patents followed attesting, to this day, to the inventiveness of the company's founder. In many cases, they became global standards.
Growth rates of up to 30 per cent
Annual growth rates of 10 to 30 per cent were not uncommon during this period. Exports in some years accounted for good 90 per cent of sales. By the mid 1970s, HOLZMA was already supplying panel saws to customers as far away as Australia, North America and the Far East. And in 1981, under the direction of
Detlef Jenkner, HOLZMA finally founded HOLZMA U.S., Sales und Service, in Gastonia, North Carolina.
A great success: in the course of just a few years, the USA evolved into the largest export market.
Welcome in the big HOMAG family
When HOMAG AG was looking for a specialist for horizontal beam saws, HOLZMA seized the chance to expand further. In 1987, HOLZMA joined the HOMAG Group, which currently holds 100 per cent of the company's shares. Taking over HOMAG Sawtech, then renamed HOLZMA S.A., in 2005 marked another milestone in the history of the company. Per year, over 200 of the "entry-level" models HPP 230, HPP 250
and HPP 250 P are produced at the manufacturing facility in Barcelona. Today, HOLZMA also produces
saws specifically designed for regional markets. These are the HPP 180, produced in Shanghai, and the
HPM 120, produced in Sao Paulo.
Partners for success
The company culture and the friendly work environment are key success factors. They are reflected in the
daily dealings of employees with each other and actively nurtured in regular, out-of-office leisure activities
and departmental excursions. This promotes a sense of shared identity, an inherent part of company policy. HOLZMA shows that the guiding principle of HOMAG Group founder Gerhard Schuler "success through partnership" is being lived wholeheartedly in Holzbronn.