Oerlikon Balzers

Oerlikon Balzers

Type	Public (SIX: OERL)
Industry	Industrial engineering and manufacturing
Founded	1946 as Gerätebauanstalt Balzers
Headquarters	Balzers, Liechtenstein
Key people	Dr. Hans Braendle, CEO
Products	Surface technologies
Revenue	484 million CHF [1]
Employees	2986 (2011)
Website	www.oerlikon.com/balzers

Oerlikon Balzers is a part of the OC Oerlikon group, a Swiss technology conglomerate, and a supplier of PVD coatings. The OC Oerlikon group consists of companies in the following industries: textile, drive systems, vacuum technologies, solar, coating, and advanced technologies. The coatings produced by Oerlikon Balzers aim to improve the performance and service life of, for example, metallic precision components by reducing friction and supplying additional hardness.

History

With the support of Prince Franz Josef II and Swiss industrialist Emil Georg Bührle, Professor Max Auwärter founded Gerätebauanstalt Balzers. The objective was to make the then largely unknown and little-researched vacuum thin film technology usable on an industrial scale. Since no systems and equipment for the production of thin-film coatings were available at the time, the company developed and produced them in-house. The first popular applications were sun protection and anti-reflection coatings for ophthalmic lenses, anti-reflection coatings for camera lenses, optical filters and reflectors and thin films for electronic applications. The firm has grown and expanded rapidly and now owns corporate sites and coating centers in Germany, USA, Italy, France, UK, Brazil, Japan, India, China and Liechtenstein. In 2011 nearly 3000 people worked at Oerlikon Balzers producing a turnover of 484 million CHF.^[2]

Liechtenstein

Oerlikon Balzers continues to use Liechtenstein as its headquarters, and is currently located in Balzers, where over 1000 people are employed.

Other business units of OC

• Drive system
• Vacuum technologies
• Solar
• Advanced technologies

References