The second best year in the company's history

Amazone 2014: turnover remains good and investment continues unabated

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 AMAZONEN-Werke generated a turnover of 468 million Euros. ”This is still a very good result and at 468 million Euros we achieved the second-best turnover figure so far in our company's history ", Amazone directors Christian Dreyer and Dr. Justus Dreyer commented looking back very positively on the previous year. Despite of the low level in agricultural commodity prices, fluctuations in various currencies and the crisis in Ukraine, they see the company continuing on a stable course of success. The export share is 80 % with the number of permanent employees amounting to 1,800. Investment in tangible fixed assets amounts to 15 million Euros whereas expenditure for research and development is kept at 5 % of turnover.

Taking into account all regional markets, the 2014 Amazone turnover was approximately 9 % lower than that in 2013 (515 million Euros), however, at the same time significantly above that of the previous years (2012: 460 million Euros, 2011: 395 million Euros, 2010: 290 million Euros). But when considering the individual markets, the development was quite different. So, in Great Britain, Ireland, Rumania, Czech Republic, Italy, Finland, Spain and Kazakhstan pleasing turnover growths were achieved. And still at the high level of the previous year was the turnover in Germany, Austria, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Belgium and in The Netherlands. In France, after Germany the second most important Amazone market, there was a drop in turnover but following two particular boom years. Over the years such investment cycles can be observed again and again. In Ukraine, the political crises in Eastern Europe resulted in a stronger decline in the willingness to invest.

"One has to consider, that general political and economical developments may again and again result in a break in investment or in the weakening of individual markets. However, we are prepared and flexible to be able to master such challenges“, said the Amazone directors. Due to their strategy; to position Amazone as a global Full-Liner for "Intelligent Crop Production", the company is very well positioned irrespective of the individual markets. "On the basis of the 3C-concept, we have today a complete programme for arable farming enabling us to provide our customers all over the world with the optimised system technology for all steps from soil tillage through to crop care."

An particularly high demand for the new models
With regard to the Amazone product ranges of soil tillage machinery, seed drills, fertiliser spreaders, crop protection sprayers and municipal equipment, the market for all the divisions has developed approximately the same. Slightly above the average for the total programme were sales in crop protection sprayers, fertiliser spreaders and the soil tillage and drilling systems for large scale operation.

Especially with the expanded Cenius cultivator series and the new Cirrus seed drills, Amazone introduced new large scale equipment to the market and they have been in strong demand from end users. The new ZA-TS ISOBUS fertiliser spreader was supplemented by numerous new models to appeal to additional customer groups.

The new Cayron reversible plough, production of which started in 2014, has also been very well accepted. It has been put into work by numerous agricultural contractors and farmers who, so far, have given only very positive feedback.

Also the benefits of electronics have been further established in practice. So, in addition to the broad acceptance of the electronic operator terminal, particularly the benefit of ISOBUS is progressively in-creasing to. Meanwhile all Amazone sprayers and ZA-TS fertiliser spreaders are available in ISOBUS. Thanks to ISOBUS for operation, part-width section control, job management and documentation can be utilised via all common ISOBUS terminals from Amazone or other manufacturers.

At the Agrosalon exhibition in Moscow, Amazone received a special award for its innovative agricultural technology. There, the technology behind the ZA-TS fertiliser spreader was awarded a gold medal and the conventional D9 6000 TC Combi drill, built in our subsidiary, GAG Eurotechnika, was awarded a silver medal.

Competences expanded further– investment at a record level
One important step, to further expand AMAZONE's innovation capability and thus underline the claim for technological leadership, was the opening of the new technology centre in Hasbergen-Gaste. With this new building, 120 modern equipped office workplaces for the employees in research & development, product management and IT specialists were created thus enabling an increase in the level of personnel across these departments.

In the course of the Amazone service offensive, the customer training centre at the Hude site was further expanded and the training staff significantly increased. At the same time the internet tool "E-Learning", via which operators can trained themselves on the operation and maintenance of complex agricultural and municipal machinery, was expanded with some additional modules. Across the year in 2014,
Amazone offered almost 500 different training and driver courses for the employees of its sales partners and customers, so round about 250 courses more than just three years ago.

In order to expand the international sales and service network, a wholly-owned subsidiary has been founded in China where the demand for Amazone machinery develops very positively. The objective is to build up here also an efficient sales organisation to further strengthen the position in this market of the future.

In 2014 Amazone has also further modernised and expanded all production sites. So, in the Leipzig
factory, a new hall with a floor space of 2,800 sq.m. for the production of the Cayron reversible plough has been built. Also in this hall, and new technology for Amazone, the "heat treatment” production
process is located.

At the Tecklenburg-Leeden site, Amazone has put into operation a 3,000 m² extension, which serves as the logistics centre for this factory. At the same time at the Amazone subsidiary GAG Eurotechnika, in Samara, Russia, a new administration building has been erected.

In Hude the production lines for seed drills plus the rotary harrow and rotary cultivator final assembly and the despatch department have moved from the factory in the town of Hude to the new production site at Altmoorhausen. By optimising the assembly and logistics processes, seed drill production has been made even more efficient. Soon, at this site, also work for the building of the new painting facility will be started. With a level of a two digit million amount, this plant is the biggest individual investment in the company's history so far.

At the Amazone headquarters in Hasbergen-Gaste, a block heat and power station (BHKW) with 250 KW electrical and 290 KW thermal power capacities has newly started operation. With an efficiency of more than 90%, the energy saving of this plant is very high and thus also an important contribution to climate protection.

Large-scale events with a positive response
The highlight of the Amazone events calendar was the Amatechnica in-house field day in May 2014 in Hasbergen-Gaste. With more than 5,500 farmers, agricultural contractors and sales partners it was
superbly attended. On a 12 hectare exhibition site visitors, among them 1,000 from neighbouring countries, including Great Britain were presented with a comprehensive, informative programme based around the Amazone agricultural machinery programme.

One highlight that created an exceptionally big response was the Amazone world record in crop protec-tion, where a UX 11200 crop protection sprayer managed in 24 hours to treat an area of 1,032 ha. With an average output of 43 ha per hour, the machine set a second new record for the work rate of modern crop protection machinery.

Outlook
For the year to come the Amazone directors are expecting to see a continuing weakening of the markets in the medium term, however, again with a recovery. They continue to evaluate the prospects for agricul-ture and agricultural machinery as being good. Agricultural products will still be needed even in these more difficult times. The further increasing world population and increasing scarcity in agricultural land but, however, also the fluctuating margins for the producers in volatile international markets and the environmentally-political parameters turn out to be the big general challenges for agriculture and agricul-tural machinery. The directors adhere to the objective "Company growth with a sense of proportion" and the continuation of the leadership in innovation within Amazone’s core competencies. The planning con-tinues to be pushed forward courageously. Additional local markets have to be entered and all the efforts to develop new, innovative machinery and systems and to further expand the Amazone product programme have to continue.