Flowmeters and Footballers – Katronic in the Month of April

As part of our ongoing reflection on the 20 years of Katronic we continue our “on this month” feature by looking at some of the events from the history of the company

When looking at April in the Katronic timeline we could almost view this as ‘Germany month’. Looking back, many of the most interesting things happened with, or through the participation of our office in Wernigerode. The affiliation between our German office and this month began in 2012 when we attended Hannover Messe exhibition for the first time. The small Katronic stand attracted interest from all over the world, including one notable visitor from the USA (see below), although unfortunately very few visitors from Germany.

One year later and we were back in Hannover only this time with three new members of staff. In the intervening months, the Katronic Prozessmesstechnik team had grown from one person to four, with Diana Volkolakova, Daniela Fröhlich and Ronny Reinke joining the Katronic fold. The 2013 event was interesting for two reasons with the emphasis depending very much on your point of view. Firstly, Katronic had a visit from the Prime Minister of the Federal State of Saxony-Anhalt to support our attendance at the event and recognise the work that we were doing in the area. We also had a visit from the former Germany, Arsenal, Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04 goalkeeper Jens Lehmann. It is probably a reflection of modern society that Katronic being honoured by an eminent regional politician was nowhere near as exciting an event as spending time in the company of someone who used to catch inflated pig’s bladders for a living.

The last visit that Katronic made to Hannover for the trade fair was in 2014. This event was used as a platform to showcase the new company logo and corporate branding for the KATflow range of flowmeters. It was also a chance to celebrate the creation of a new company, Katronic AG & Co. KG the face of Katronic in Germany and Eastern Europe. The new logo and branding replaced the ones that we used since the creation of the company in 1997. Unlike the first attempt, we did not produce the new graphics in Windows Paint, with external consultants taking on responsibility for the design.

April 2014 was also the month when we launched a second new Katronic company. We created Katronic LLC in order to provide sales and support to the United States and Canada with the intention of growing our presence in this market. This new venture represented a considerable change for Katronic as traditionally all of our export sales were conducted through distributors. The new office is managed by Mr. Len Welch. He initially discovered Katronic when visiting the Hannover Messe in 2012 looking for a range of interesting European instruments. Sales in the US grew slowly through 2015 but have increased significantly in the last 12 months. The expectation is that this success will continue into the future as the Katronic flowmeters become more established and market penetration improves.