R&M: Growth spurt continues in 2006

In the first half of 2006, the cabling specialist from Wetzikon obtained projects all over Europe, in the Middle East and in the booming urban agglomerations of East Asia.

Martin Reichle, CEO of the independent family business Reichle & De-Massari AG (R&M) in Wetzikon, reported: "We had a good start in 2006."

With increased sales of approximately 15% in the first half of the year, R&M clearly has exceeded expectations. The strategy of consistent international market development already produced good results last year. In 2005, R&M increased sales by 16% to CHF 161 million (EUR 103 million).

The R&M group is among the top 500 businesses in Switzerland. Constant expansion of the worldwide logistics is a must due to the growth. Currently, R&M is looking for a solution at the home base in Wetzikon for today's space problems that affect all divisions.

Since the beginning of the year, R&M has created 19 new jobs in Wetzikon alone. Worldwide, the company employs approximately 550 employees. R&M is now represented in 110 countries with subsidiaries and offices. In the past few months, R&M has opened new representative offices in many markets, including Saudi, Egypt, Bulgaria, Great Britain, India, Japan, Russia, Spain, and South Korea. The market entry in China is succeeding at a great pace.

Laurent Amestoy, Regional General Manager, R&M Middle East & Africa, points out an additional, technologically based growth factor: "With the start of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet era high-quality, shielded copper cabling can no longer be avoided in all important world markets."

Today, Europe, but in particular Eastern Europe as well as the Middle East and the dynamic economic zones of East Asia are growth regions. R&M obtained a number of projects in the finance and banking sector, in office real estate and industry. Among the outstanding examples is the Rondo 1 office complex in Warsaw, a project of the Hochtief group, which conducts business in all of Eastern Europe.

An innovative cabling infrastructure, developed by R&M, was installed. This infrastructure allows the tenants to freely determine the location of each data, telephone and power outlet on the entire floor and to move it at any time. Availability and quality of the connections are completely maintained.

R&M is actively assisting in the network expansion of the telecommunications companies and cable providers, which is in progress, and provides for growth impulses. The new products comprising digital television, broadband Internet and telephone via one connection (Triple Play) require substantial investments.

Currently, for example, Swisscom is equipping many of their transfer points with new R&M fiber-optic management system. In its home market Switzerland, R&M is the market leader in telecommunications and information technology cabling solutions.

Top priority market demands: security, quality and bandwidth

The driving force in all sectors is the need for modern, powerful networks providing better transmission quality and greater bandwidth. Security plays increasingly a bigger role because today, companies can no longer tolerate network failures.

Martin Reichle declares: "We are perfectly positioned as a supplier of high-end solutions in copper as well as in fiber-optic cabling in view of these high priority market demands." Transmission quality and network security are focal concerns at R&M product development and manufacturing.

Innovations for added value and multimedia

In addition to the international market development, Martin Reichle sees an important success factor in the constant development of new product solutions. R&M has developed a pronounced customer-specific innovation culture and will continue to do so. Therefore, the slogan for 2006 is: Get More.

Create added value for our customers. Martin Reichle: "We want to continue to offer more than our competitors."

A number of innovations emphasize this goal. Among other things, optical data transmission with robust plastic fibers (Polymer Optical Fiber = POF) moves more and more into focus. Optical data transmission allows broadband or multimedia applications for short to medium links in offices, residential buildings and factories.

R&M is the leader in the POF connection technique. With the SC-POF R&M has developed a compact connector for POF cabling which can be terminated on site in a few steps in minutes. Multimedia home networks can be quickly and effortlessly installed with POF and an R&M system solution introduced this past spring.