Kirn, 17 Dec. 2020. Effective from 1 January 2021, SIMONA will be introducing a new organisational structure for its business activities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). This will involve discontinuing the company's former divisional separation into the product areas of Semi-Finished Parts and Pipes & Fittings in favour of an application-oriented structure centred around business lines. In future, the company's EMEA business as a whole will be headed by Helena Lau as Vice President Business EMEA.

The new organisation is the key result of SIMONA's strategic reorientation in Europe, which the company has been pursuing consistently despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The principal goals are to raise the company's competitiveness through improved efficiency, closer dialogue with end users and better customer service, in addition to pressing ahead with efforts to enter new fields of application. The new business line structure is designed to further deepen SIMONA's understanding of end user requirements, identify trends and accelerate the development of new products. Initially, the company will be introducing five business lines: Industry, Infrastructure, Advertisement & Building Industry, Mobility and Aquaculture. Market segments have been defined within the business lines. In this context, end customer orientation is independent of the sales channel. Retail/wholesale will continue to play a key strategic role.

Other important elements of the new organisational structure are an organisational separation of customer support and order management in Customer Service, the establishment of a project group for the Industry sector as well as end-to-end process orientation throughout the company, which will improve delivery capability and enable faster response times.

"At the beginning of the crisis we took the decision to respond flexibly to our financial situation as and when required, while still pursuing our strategic realignment in Europe with the consistency and determination needed. We have now taken another sizeable step forward in this area. We have been working hard over the past months to introduce the new structure in time for the new year. This will strengthen our capabilities as an innovator, inject greater dynamism into SIMONA and thus improve our competitiveness. The initial response from customers has been favourable. It is important to us that the retail/wholesale sector shall remain a central pillar of our business model, and we want to further strengthen our partnership by focusing on end user applications. Our efforts with regard to strategic realignment will not end with this milestone. In 2021, we will be looking to raise the bar in terms of process orientation and further optimise production and logistics with an extensive investment programme at the Kirn and Ringsheim sites," says Dr. Jochen Hauck, COO of SIMONA AG.

"The motto of our new structure - 'GrowTogether' - illustrates our commitment to business expansion together with our customers and partners, complemented by the ambition for our team to grow together across the various product categories and fields of application. We want to make greater use of the synergies that we have within our product range as a producer of semi-finished parts and pipes and fittings, especially in the industrial sector. I am very much looking forward to this challenging task in a team of proven specialists and new talent," says Helena Lau, Vice President Business EMEA.