In early December 2024, Fairburn’s Managing Director, Craig Carr was invited to visit the Weishaupt facility in Schwendi, south of Munich. Weishaupt are a family owned business, with an annual turnover in excess of €1BN. Along with other products they make boiler burners and heat pumps, although their premium quality and prices have so far limited their presence in the UK, but Fairburn sees significant potential for their commercial and industrial boilers.
Craig enjoyed the factory tour, made some good contacts and was very impressed with the levels of automation. As he says “I have never seen another factory like this in 29 years working in the combustion industry. They have missed absolutely nothing; the automation is incredible. They even have robots continually reordering inventory in their stores to minimise the time spent gathering materials for the superlative manufacturing processes and spare parts picking.”
Many of their services have been brought in-house, giving Weishaupt greater control over output and costs. For example, they have their own drills for installing ground source heat pumps. They also have developed and tested options for customer who want to switch to using Hydrogen as an alternative to natural gas ready for when commercially viable Hydrogen supplies are available to industry.