Starlinger has announced record sales during the 2023/2024 financial year. The Austria-based machinery manufacturer posted its highest ever turnover just under €400 million, double what it achieved in 2016.
Starlinger produces both plastic recycling systems and woven sack machinery. The diversity of its portfolio, as well as its focus on exports, are responsible for its success in a year when European machinery orders fell by 23%.
“As an export-oriented company, we deliver to countries all over the world and can compensate the recession in one region with the economic upturn in another,” said Angelika Huemer, managing partner of Starlinger.
Starlinger exported 99.43 % of its machinery in the past fiscal year.
Starlinger joins other European machine manufactures that have defied odds amid the challenging economical and geopolitical conditions the continent has faced in the past years. Hellweg, for example, saw an increase of 30% to 50% in output in 2023, at a time when many European plastics recyclers were seeing double-digit percentage drops in sales. In 2024, Erema partly attributed its modest growth to its capacity to export machinery to markets like India and the US, which are ‘picking up the slack’.
With 11 foreign branches and over 1000 employees worldwide, Starlinger serves customers in more than 130 countries.
As European machinery manufactures struggle to compete with cheaper, heavily subsidised offers from China and the US, some have started to adapt by internationalising their value chain. Arburg, which has always manufactured their machines in Germany, in March announced plans for assembly plants in North America and China.
Austria's Wittmann Group also is rethinking its site strategy and is looking to transfer production elsewhere, in large part because wages have risen steeply along with the cost of living.