ZF plans to acquire Bosch Rexroth’s large gearbox business

ZF Friedrichshafen plans to acquire Bosch Rexroth’s large gearbox business. Agreements to this effect were signed on May 13th, 2015. The acquisition is subject to approval by the antitrust authorities.

Large gearboxes are used in wind turbines, as well as in industrial and mobile applications such as tunnel-boring machines and mining excavators. Apart from the lead location in Witten, Germany, and the generator gear plant in Beijing, China, the unit’s service location in Lake Zurich, IL (USA) will also be transferred to ZF. All in all, the unit employs more than 1,200 associates. It has been agreed that the purchase price will not be disclosed.

“We are confident that our large gearbox business will benefit from ZF’s transmission expertise, and be able to make the best possible use of its growth opportunities in the new unit to be created at ZF,” says Karl Tragl, the chairman of the board of management of Bosch Rexroth AG. Over the past few years, he added, Bosch Rexroth has taken the business forward successfully. “The development of new wind-turbine gears especially exposed to weak winds was a deliberate expansion of our product range,” Tragl says. In the future, he went on, Bosch Rexroth will focus more intensively on its core business of industrial and mobile applications.

Commenting on the transaction, ZF’s CEO Dr. Stefan Sommer says: “In acquiring Bosch Rexroth’s large gearbox business, we are making an ideal addition to our industrial technology portfolio and opening up a new customer base.” His colleague Wilhelm Rehm, who is the board member responsible for Corporate Materials Management and Industrial Technology, adds: “We are glad to welcome an experienced workforce with more than 30 years of expertise in manufacturing and developing wind turbine gearboxes, not to mention more than half a century of know-how in industrial gearboxes. In making Witten the headquarters of our new Industrial Drives business unit, we are recognizing this fact.”

Bosch Rexroth will not be selling the small gearboxes it manufactures above all for mobile machinery. Part of the Mobile Applications business unit, these gearboxes are manufactured at the Bosch Rexroth locations in Nuremberg (Germany), Beijing (China), and Bursa (Turkey).