Nittenau: where the skies are always blue …

An eternally cloudless blue sky – you’re probably thinking of a paradisiacal island in the Caribbean or the South Seas. In Germany, though, this kind of weather is not the norm, to put it mildly. And yet I always associate a small town in Schwandorf County with a saying that my granddad regularly repeated on the way there: “In Nittenau, the sky is always blue.”

Whether due to my childlike gullibility or because the weather just always happened to play along during our outings to Nittenau, back then I swallowed his story about the blue skies without batting an eyelid.

A few years later, and with a slightly less optimistic attitude towards Germany’s weather, I have meanwhile discarded the idea of Nittenau’s eternally cloudless skies. But even though now I no longer associate a blue vault of heaven with Nittenau, I still haven’t quite got over the connotations it evokes.

Blue, you see is also the colour of the Krones flag at the facility in Nittenau, conspicuous even from a distance, and losing nothing by comparison with the sky overhead. 🙂

Four decades of diversified production

Yes, four decades. You read that correctly. Krones’ branch facility has been up and running ever since the early 1970s. It was back in 1972 that the decision was taken to create an entirely new plant in Nittenau – with a production area of 2,500 m² and 63 hard-working employees.

But why did it have to be Nittenau precisely? The reason, and simultaneously the advantage, is that Neutraubling and Nittenau are just 30 km away from each other. This close proximity to the main plant is still today providing numerous advantages for the group, particularly when you consider what Nittenau concentrates on manufacturing.

The facility in the Upper Palatinate is, so to speak, the little brother of Krones’ main facility in Neutraubling. But little doesn’t mean less important, let alone second-rate. Because without the plant in Nittenau the guys in Neutraubling would be missing out on some hugely significant components. “Huge” being the operative word here. After all, the staff in Nittenau produce large machinery components for final assembly in the main plant. Without them, the Krones teams in Neutraubling wouldn’t have any filler ring bowls, nor any filler or bottle tables, for example. So, as you can imagine, given these orders of magnitude, a standard toolkit is not going to suffice. Our colleagues there have to operate with specialised, overdimensioned high-precision machines, vertical turret lathes and boring mills.

A propos “boring mill”: it was only recently that Nittenau invested in a new one. This system for machining large-size components is expected to upgrade performance by 30 per cent and enhance manufacturing quality. So Nittenau is not resting on its laurels!

What’s more, over the course of time Krones’ plant in Nittenau has established itself as pretty much of a complete-system supplier. All of the firm’s filling valves are produced there, for example. Fully assembled ready for mounting, they then end up in Neutraubling, where they are installed before Krones’ bottling lines go into operation all over the world.

Auspicious training facility

The plant in Nittenau also scores highly in terms of training. Whether it’s for mechatronics engineers, cutting machine operators or line mechanics, in the facility’s own training workshop, for each vocational choice, major priority is attached to enabling the trainees to share in the practical work concerned, so as to prepare the young talents to optimum effect for their subsequent careers. Fully in line with our motto of “On the pitch, not just on the touchlines”!

Overall, the plant in Nittenau can be justifiably proud of its staff skilling capabilities: after all, way over 500 young people have successfully completed their training there. And this is set to continue, since the training workshop has been (and is still being) continually expanded and modernised.

Well, that sounds like a rather good track record for Nittenau, wouldn’t you agree? It augurs well for the future, too, which is why we’re always glad to welcome new employees who will tackle their remits with the same motivated commitment as our current staff. If you’re interested in a career with Krones in Nittenau, then please feel free to take a look to see whether perhaps the job portal might have a vacancy that suits you. Have fun! 🙂