Emco Group Celebrates 70th Anniversary

Emco Group is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. The company engineers a range of machine tools, from conventional turning and milling machines to CNC turning centers and vertical machining centers, as well as fully automated manufacturing cells and high-speed milling and drilling centers.

In 1947, during the post-war reconstruction in Austria, engineer Karl Maier founded a business manufacturing turning machines. In the same year, near Genoa, Italy, the company Mecof was founded, an abbreviation of the Italian for, “mechanical workshop.” Several years later, the two companies met and began a successful partnership.

In the 1950s, Mr. Maier was making small Unimat turning machines. He then expanded the portfolio by offering hardness testing machines. After Mr. Maier’s death in the 1970s, his son Ernst Alexander took over the company. Under his management, that company was renamed Ernst Maier Co. (Emco for short) and advanced to become a technology leader in both hardness testing and machining equipment.

The company continued growing until the the 1990s and established itself as a manufacturer of CNC industrial and training machines, hardness testing equipment, woodworking machines, and laser cutting machines. In 1993, the machine tool industry experienced one of its worst crises, and EMCO was not spared. A-Tec Industries AG, an industrial holding company based in Vienna, Austria, took over Emco and successfully navigated the crisis by focusing on CNC industrial and training machines.

The principle of simplification has proved to be extremely successful in technical training, a sector for which the company has been developing independent machines since 1982. In 2005, with the objective of hitting the ground running as a full-service provider for machining production, the machine tool manufacturer acquired Mecof and Famup. Today, Emco’s machining centers are developed and built at the Famup premises.

The machines are used in moldmaking, automotive and general engineering to produce high-volume components such as wind turbine main shafts, hydraulic cylinders for construction machines, ship propellers or drill heads for oil production.

“All machines of the EMCO Group are designed according to EMCO`s maxim, ‘Design to cost,’” says Dr. Stefan Hansch, CEO. “All development and production take place in Europe, and Emco production companies are required to implement the highest standards of quality, production and efficiency.”

Today, Emco has production sites in Austria, Italy, Russia and Germany.

Emco, based in Hallein, Austria, is owned by the Salzburg construction machine dealer Günter Kuhn, who took it over at the beginning of 2011 via Kuhn Holding. The company group employs around 700 workers across the world from branch offices located in Germany, Italy, the USA, Russia and the Czech Republic.