The expansion project is the largest ever undertaken in the 53-year history of the sideloader business, as it prepares for the next stage in its development and takes advantage of the growing popularity of its high capacity and electric sideloaders.
Torrential rain brought chaos to much of northern Italy earlier in the year, delaying the start of some construction, but fortunately the Verona region avoided the worst of the weather.
The work already completed includes the excavation of 1,200 lorry loads of earth, removing and buttressing much of a steep escarpment, to add over 3,000m2 of automated storage, around half of which will be underground.
A new rolling road, testing centre, energy supply upgrade and sandblasting area are also being added. A restructuring of the pre-assembly process is already under way, with full completion expected later in the year.
Managing director, Klaus Pirpamer, said the work has set the foundations for the next generation of the company, which recorded record sales for the past three years, despite the challenges of post-Covid supply chain issues and the impact of the conflict in Ukraine.
“This project is incredibly important to our future.,” said Mr Pirpamer. “We needed to make significant changes to meet the challenges of the next 50 years, where electric machines in particular will dominate. That will also have an impact on our own power needs. We can also add efficiency to our storage operations as well as provide further space for our product innovation team.”
The trend towards larger capacity models prompted a new production hall to be built in 2019, coinciding with the company’s 50th anniversary. At the time, the new hall was one of the biggest projects Baumann had undertaken – this latest expansion is around five times in scale.
“We’ve seen an unprecedented level of growth and all our departments here have done amazing work to respond to the difficult conditions,” said Mr Pirpamer, “and this level of investment cannot be underestimated. Years of planning and negotiations with local authorities have been undertaken to reduce the environmental impact of the work, as well as keep one of the town’s largest employers in place.”
Earlier this year Baumann added a new robot welding line, overhead cranes, guided vehicle and new CNC machine to facilitate 90% of mast production in-house. The work is intended to allow Baumann to continue its philosophy of high quality, hand-built production by bringing further efficiencies and economies of scale to pre-assembly processes, such as welding, painting and CNC work.
