The Packaging Valley employs a workforce of approx. 7,000 the packaging machinery industry. Some of its companies have an export rate of more than 80 %, with the US and Europe as key markets. Recently, the emerging markets in South America and Asia have begun to play a significant role.
 
Core element of the mission of Packaging Valley Germany, founded in 2007, is the creation of awareness of this globally unique concentration and competence in packaging machinery engineering. Within a relatively small area, potential and existing customers have the opportunity to get an abundance of on-site information about leading packaging solutions within the district of Schwaebisch Hall and its neighboring regions. That makes even long trips informative and efficient.
 
For its member companies, the newly created platform was a logical step to access additional synergetic benefits. The Association will partake in academic training, advanced training, exhibitions and trade shows focused on special machinery engineering as well as in congress events. Synergetic staff recruitment and the exchange of experience in the fields of science and research are projected. This measure has led to substantial synergy gains for all stakeholders without curtailing the companies’ independence. The recent controversy about Schwaebisch Hall as a location for an academy has shown the importance of pooling the interests of the packaging companies in order to be heard as a cluster with one articulate voice.
 
In the meantime, the “Packaging Valley Germany” is registered and protected as a collective brand. Packaging Valley Germany stands for a cluster of packaging companies of outstanding competence within the region and is communicated and represented on a global level. The cluster’s mission includes generating networks with other organization, coordinating events such as trade shows, conferences and workshops etc. and participation in academic marketing. Awards and future subsidies within the frame of the Cluster Initiative of the Land of Baden-Württemberg are aimed at boosting the cooperation with the Packaging Excellence Center in Waiblingen. This will further the development and enhancement of the value creation chain and the cluster network in southern Germany.
 
When founded in 2007, the Association counted 15 member companies and today has 34. By now, the majority of region’s the packaging machinery manufacturers are organized in Packaging Valley Germany e. V. Since October 2009, Mr. Bernd Hansen, director of the Hansen Group in Sulzbach-Laufen and of Kocher-Plastik Maschinenbau is in office as the Association’s chairman; his deputy is Hans Bühler, managing director of Optima Packaging Group.
 
Other members of the Executive Committee are Mr. Reinald Weiss from R. Weiss Verpackungstechnik GmbH & Co. KG in Crailsheim, Ms. Elke Bader from Willi Bader GmbH, Bader Packaging Solutions in Braunsbach, and – assigned as the Association’s treasurer – Mr. Kurt Engel, Business Manager of Technologiezentrum in Schwaebisch Hall. The Association “Packaging Valley Germany e.V.” is financed by the contributions of by its member companies’, which are scaled in proportion to turnover.
 
The development of the packaging cluster is additionally funded by EU subsidies and subsidies from the Land of Baden-Württemberg.
 
In the ranks of our members, we have pioneers of packaging technology side by side with young up-and-comers, all of them, however, leaders in their domain. Among them, just to give a few examples, the inventor of blow-fill-seal technology (rommelag®-Kunststoffmaschinen Vertriebs-gesellschaft mbH), of fully automated paper hygiene packaging (Optima Group) or of fast clamping devices for sorting inserts (E+K Sortiersysteme GmbH). Even before its official launch, Packaging Valley was mentioned by Prof. Dr. Hermann Simon as an important packaging machinery cluster in his book “Hidden Champions of the 21st Century”. The book speaks about the rapid development of family-owned companies which, in his view, are exemplary for successful corporate governance like the other “Hidden Champions” he discusses. This author and head of the international consultants Simon, Kucher & Partners is considered to be one of the most influential personalities of German economy, and his book has been translated into 15 languages.