Baumer of America with new headquarter in Florida from 2023

On January 1, 2023, Baumer of America (BoA) opened the doors of its new trading and production site in Florida. Moving the head office from Towaco in New Jersey is the second relocation in a history of more than 40 years. Founded in 1979 the business developed rapidly from the attempt to anchor first business relations to a completely independent subsidiary that nowadays does not only serve American customers, but also those in Canada and Mexico.

Since 1992 the team started the manufacturing of band knives at its new headquarter in NJ that was chosen to be prepared for upcoming further development and increased services. In 2006 this location opened a machine showroom to demonstrate new technology. Some years later the corporate office was refurbished with increased blade production and used machines being sold from 2015. Now that the team counts more than 40 employees. BoA tripled in size during the last five years and still has ambitions for further growth – therefore a new and bigger headquarter had to be acquired.

"We have now outgrown the New Jersey location over the past years”, states BoA’s CEO Uwe Scharfy. “With only this location, an expansion towards the North American market would not have been possible. We therefore decided on the new location in order to be able to cover larger parts of the USA, Canada and Mexico in terms of both, service and support."

The new complex in Tampa offers 250m² of office space and 3,300m² of commercial space.
Next to the existing in-house knife production, BoA is expanding to include additional production and assembly space to serve the US American customers in a more efficient way. Also, a larger showroom and testing center is included to provide opportunities for test cuts and other demonstrations with customers. In the future the BoA team will also take care of the pre-assembly and delivery of Bäumer’s new development Contour V-blade to the North American market. The vertical contour cutter was presented to the North American customers in 2022 at Foam Expo Novi and has since become the absolute darling of the industry with 8 machine sales.

“We really want to use our new location to acquire new customers who currently do not claim our services or knives”, says Scharfy. The new locality will bring the possibility of faster responses when it comes to service and support all over the United States.

Representatives of the mother company Albrecht Bäumer GmbH & Co. KG in Freudenberg, Germany, stated how impressed they are by the great development of BoA. Christoph Hauck, CEO of Bäumer in Germany, was delighted: “The new Tampa site is an impressive development compared to Towaco. Bäumer is now playing in a different league in North America.”

Both Executive Officers, Scharfy and Hauck, are fully convinced that this great step will be having a positive impact on the company, not only in the US but for the company worldwide. Within the next five years the new location is to be continuously expanded and extended to 5000 m².

Of course, the new location strategy was not only developed to create more space for the team, but also to have the chance to increase customer centricity even more. In the future the administration and technical support departments will still operate from Towaco. Also, the sales team will remain working from all over the country, visiting the customers on site on a regular basis. The Florida headquarter will have the role of the center of customer support, greeting guests at the testing center and offering more space for the presentation of individual solutions and high-quality band knife production.
As transportation routes can be shortened, it is a goal to further speed up the delivery of all BoA goods that are exclusively made in America, such as several machine upgrades (Retrofits).

The further development of a retrofit strategy is also part of Scharfy’s agenda. Over the past years, upgrading machines has become a quickly amortizing alternative to purchasing a new machine. Especially in cases of a machine failure, which can be dissolved by a retrofit, Baumer of America will be able to act even faster at the customer’s side in the future. The concept of purchasing old machines has also proved successful in the past and is to be continued in Florida. In-house, used Bäumer machines are completely revised and brought up to the latest technical standard with the help of retrofits before being resold. A solution for the market that is not only cost-effective but also sustainable.
 

The whole staff of Baumer of America has gone through a nerve-wracking period during the last few months. "In addition to organizing the set-up of a new location in Tampa, daily business went on as usual. That time was stressful for everyone," reports Uwe Scharfy. Nevertheless, everyone in the team is now looking forward to new challenges in Florida with even closer relationships to the existing Baumer customers and new opportunities of tapping into new ones.