Hydraulic system solutions for global customers

ARGO-HYTOS holds a majority participation in AT Automacao Industrial in
Jarinu (São Paulo, Brazil), a family-owned company founded in 1999. The
new company name is ARGO-HYTOS AT Fluid Power Systems Ltda. MDA
Technologies interviewed Christian H. Kienzle, CEO of ARGO-HYTOS and
Waldir Vianna Jr., managing director of ARGO-HYTOS AT Fluid Power Systems Ltda.

What benefits does the new enterprise offer local and global customers and what are the opportunities arising from these?

Waldir Vianna: If we want to supply global players, we need to have global presence. Brazil has the majority of big mobile OEM’s and the new enterprise can offer local support, customizing projects in a faster way. On the other hand, we can also offer all the benefits of an international company for the local market.

Christian Kienzle: In the case of Brazil, ARGO-HYTOS acted according our corporate strategy to follow our customers into new locations in order to provide system solutions out of one hand. We do this with local units internationally!

What products and services do you offer and what is special about them?

Waldir Vianna: ARGO-HYTOS AT has been working on the hydraulic market since 1999, based on a lean, young, dynamic and innovative structure. With 25 years of experience in hydraulic projects, we offer fluid power solutions for the whole Brazilian market. For our team it is not enough just to reach customers’ current needs. We wish to offer new ideas and concepts in order to provide our customer partners all benefits of our asset of products, experiences and our international team’s knowledge.

Christian Kienzle: ARGO- HYTOS AT has a young team of gifted hydraulic employees who are eagerly learning about our full product line of components and systems. We do not limit our product line in Brazil.

At the moment, special effects from the soccer world championships 2014 and the Summer Olympics 2016 characterize the Brazilian market. What do you expect for the future?

Waldir Vianna: Brazil is the only country in the world with more than 8 million square kilometers of area, 200 million people, stable economy, democracy and where people are starting to understand their rights. The best benefit of these events for the Brazilians was to show, that if we are capable to build up stadiums with international quality, we should also be able to build better hospitals, schools, roads, parks, subways, airports, etc… in whole Brazil, not only in stadium zones. These were the streets’ messages in last June. All of these improvements are bigger potential markets for ARGO-HYTO AT and the results we will be felt for decades.

What user industries are particularly important to your companies and why?

Waldir Vianna: Mainly, our company transfer, to control and save energy. This is our job. Each company who needs to transfer loads by moving, raising, lowering in a controlled way and saving energy is our potential customer. Markets as constructions, agriculture, logistics, oil and gas, wind power, mining and also industrial markets as tooling machines, plastic injection and blowing or metal conforming are important for us.

Mr Kienzle, would you like to implement the „Brazilian model“ also in other regions where ARGO-HYTOS is not yet present?

Christian Kienzle: Actually we are already doing this in many countries, just look at China, India, Poland and the US. Russia and Turkey are the next steps to a further internationalization of our group of companies. Recently we had our International Group Meeting in Poland with 80 participants from around 20 countries. I think our strong development in a shaky business environment proves the success of this strategy.