Industry Business Services Headquarters Siegen, Germany Founded 1961 | Website www.utsch.com Founder Erich Utsch Type of business Public limited company | |
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Key people Dr. Tilman Schwinn (CSO and COO), Dominic Höffgen (CFO)
Ulrich Waldschmidt (Chairman of the Supervisory Board) Products Vehicle registration plates Revenue More than 250 million Euros (2013) Number of employees As Utsch Group about 1,500 | ||
Erich Utsch AG is the global market leader in security license plate technology, headquartered in Siegen, Germany.
Contents
History
Erich Utsch established the company in 1961 as a family business.The first embossing machine was a modified wine press. 1969, after his father’s death, Manfred Utsch took over. In 2001, the Erich Utsch KG became a public limited company whose majority shares are in family ownership. Today Erich Utsch AG is active in more than 130 countries, with joint ventures in 52 countries and has as group about 1,500 employees worldwide.
In 1988, Utsch confirmed his role as a technology pioneer by introducing a new, environmentally friendly and extremely durable dry roller coating technique for license plates called “hot stamping”.
From 1995 on, Utsch developed extensive security concepts for license plates. By using laser-codes, holograms, graphics or coats of arms, license plates turned into national high security documents. In 2002, Utsch introduced the first windshield label with transponder technology as an electronic identification document.
Between 2008 and 2009 Utsch realized the three biggest orders in value of over 30. Mio. € in the Arab world.
In 2012, the company produced more than 50 million vehicle license plates worldwide. In the same year Erich Utsch AG and J. H. Tönnjes GmbH & Co. KG (the two world leaders in security license plate technology) founded a joint venture: UTI (Utsch Tönnjes International).
The sale of the majority shareholding owned by Manfred Utsch became known in September 2016. In future, it belongs to a Swedish and Australian group, represented in the negotiations by Ian George and Anders Eriksson. Manfred Utsch stated that the sale will support the business continuity and safe the jobs at the location Siegen in long term. He himself will only perform an advisory task in the future.
Products
Since the company’s foundation the core business has been the production of vehicle license plates including manufacturing tools and production facilities. Already in 1965, Utsch launched its first mechanical embossing press. In 1975, the first “Automatic Embossing Press” was introduced to manufacture vehicle license plates in large quantities in a computer-controlled and fully automatic process.
In 1998, Utsch developed and built the worldwide largest automatic production facility for license plates for the Italian state in Foggia where all license plates are centrally produced.
The 2013 launched U-Press is able to allow biometric login, optic control and continuous documentation of the workflow. The U-Press closes the gap between manual and automatic production and hinders wrong printings by accident or by purpose.
Since 1985 Erich Utsch AG also offers license plate frames without screws. In 2008 the company launched Erulux, an LED-illuminated license plate frame.
Stakeholding (selection)
Erich Utsch AG holds more than 80 stakes respectively runs joint ventures in almost 50 countries. The most important are: