June 25, 2024

At Kerschgens, we have always been committed to conserving resources and taking full responsibility for our environmental footprint. An important goal – and with the introduction of an environmental management system (EMS) in accordance with the DIN EN ISO 14001 standard, we have now taken a big step towards achieving it. The EMS is a true milestone in our endeavor to minimize our environmental impact while maximizing our performance.

The EMS defines the responsibilities and processes involved in environmental protection at Kerschgens. It encompasses planning, implementation and controls, as well as the definition of responsibilities and behaviors. With our ISO 14001 certification, we pledge to integrate the EMS into all aspects of our operations in order to reduce our company’s environmental impact and pursue our environmental goals.

The nomination of Marc Wolfs, Andreas Schäfer and Dominik Garbrecht as Environmental Management Officers confirms our commitment to this cause. Their duties include integrating the EMS into our operations and providing guidance to all members of the company. They ensure the effective implementation and continuous maintenance of the environmental management system in order to keep it functioning perfectly at all times. The three Environmental Management Officers fulfill this task by monitoring the EMS itself, the company’s resource management and environmental training requirements, and by initiating necessary changes.

We are proud to now have three reliable contacts for all environmental questions and to keep working on minimizing our ecological footprint.

Left to right: Achim Breuer, Felix Herbort, Volker Volkmann, Andreas Schäfer, Pierre Schlüper, Marc Wolfs, Dominik Garbrecht

June 12, 2024

Kerschgens is happy and proud to celebrate with Managing Director Heinz Herbort as he marks his 40th year in the company. Heinz Herbort reached this remarkable milestone on June 1, 2024. As he came into work the following Monday, our staff gave him a warm welcome and surprised him with sweets and special gifts.

Heinz Herbort began his career at Kerschgens in 1984 as an authorized officer, bringing his extensive expertise and dedication to our team. In 1989 he was made partner and on January 1, 1994 he assumed the role and duties of Managing Director. He headed Kerschgens successfully for decades, working with the Kerschgens family and the management team to transform the company from a steel trader to a one-stop service provider.

In honor of this important anniversary, Heinz Herbort received a hand-made work piece and a photo collage showing key moments of his 40-year career at Kerschgens. We’d like to thank Heinz Herbort for his extraordinary contribution and tireless work for our company. Without his visionary leadership and his ability to bring out the best in all of us, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

October 10, 2023

100% responsibility is not limited to our work with customers. Our home region is also close to our hearts, which is why we have sponsored a number of charitable organizations over the years.

One of them is the Tafel Trier food bank, which we will support with an annual donation going forward. And on September 5, 2023, our staff spent a day working alongside the organization’s volunteers in Trier.

Ms. Bergmann, Director of the Catholic Women’s Welfare Service (SkF), which runs the Trier food bank, gave us some insights into her daily work:

In the morning, a team of volunteers collects food that is about to expire or couldn’t be sold from various stores, supermarkets and bakeries and cleans it. Following a brief check, visitors to the food bank receive an authorization card detailing the day and time of their visit and the number of people living in their household. This allows the volunteers to serve about 60-70 people a day without long waiting times. Visitors pay one euro per household and are given an amount of food that corresponds to the size of their family.

Rainer Bohlen, who manages the Kerschgens site in Bitburg, was in charge of handing out fruit. Manuel Krischel, his deputy, manned the bakery section and Anja Sachsen, Assistant to the Site Manager, helped the food bank’s volunteers as they welcomed and registered the visitors.

With its decision to support a local food bank, Kerschgens again honors its commitment to social and regional responsibility.

The food bank service is made possible by roughly 70 volunteers. Rather than simply handing out food, they are always ready to greet their visitors with a smile and a friendly ear for their concerns. 

However, the number of people relying on the food bank grows every day while food donations are declining. The organization also suffers from a shortage of volunteers. If you are interested in supporting the Tafel food bank, you can write to the following address: ehrenamt@skf-trier.de

The Tafel Trier food bank is run by the Catholic Women’s Welfare Service, an organization that supports a number of charitable causes, among them child and youth services, and services for disabled persons, vulnerable women and families, sex workers, sufferers of mental illness and homeless women. 

July 1, 2023

We are thrilled for our longtime colleague Manuel Krischel, who has been an invaluable member of the Kerschgens family for 17 years. He embodies the Kerschgens values and will carry his 100% responsibility over to his new position. In 2006 he began training at Kerschgens as a merchant in wholesale and foreign trade, with fantastic support from this team. Manuel Krischel has held many different positions in our company – going from trainee to sales and field representative, then team leader and finally deputy site manager in Bitburg. From the earliest days of his career, he learned what it means to bear responsibility through the support and guidance of our senior managers Rainer Bohlen and Heinz Herbort. And in addition to all this, he studied for a business administration degree in the steel trade, which he received in 2021.

Today he is both deputy site manager and account manager for our most important customers. He shares these duties with Rainer Bohlen, leveraging his expert knowledge in the areas of human resources, quality management, controlling, site development and strategic planning.

Being named an authorized officer is a well-deserved recognition of his commitment and achievements. We are proud to see him in his new role and look forward to working with him on many successful future projects.

December 15, 2022

As part of its strategy for greater sustainability, Kerschgens has been partnering since earlier this year with Numcamp, a start-up from Berlin that has developed a new energy and climate management app.

Berlin-based start-up Numcamp supports Kerschgens in becoming more sustainable

The EnPI app offers users easy access to functions that help monitor and save energy and CO₂. After entering into this partnership, Kerschgens has begun to take a closer look at the energy consumption of some of its machines. One of them is the abrasive blasting and conservation line, which heats up metal in a preheating furnace using liquid gas, then removes cinder and rust from the surface by blasting it with small steel balls. In a final step, the clean surface is protected against corrosion with a thin layer of paint.

Using the evaluation functions provided by the Numcamp software, Kerschgens was able to optimize its use of the blasting and conservation line and increase its efficiency per ton of blasted material by 30%. This saved the company approximately 22,500 liters of liquid gas (which corresponds to approx. 35 tons of CO₂) in the first 9 months of this year.

Dominik Garbrecht is responsible for internal and external logistics at Kerschgens and also manages the use of the app. ” The EnPI tool and its evaluation functions allow us to precisely analyze the energy consumption of individual processes and to use any potential for improvement. The example of the liquid gas consumption of our blasting line shows that even small changes in our daily operations can result in significant cost and CO₂ savings”, he summarizes his initial experience with the new technology. The positive results give Kerschgens an incentive to tackle other areas of its operations, such as the diesel consumption of its vehicle fleet.

This partnership creates a win-win situation for both sides: While Kerschgens can optimize its operations, and thereby its profit, its young partner Numcamp can benefit from the experiences, ideas and suggestions for improvement gained from this field test.

Numcamp is a start-up based in Berlin which has developed a modern app for energy and climate management. The EnPI app offers at-a-glance information, is easy to use and packed with smart features and functions. Saving energy and CO2 has never been this easy.

More information:
Kerschgens Werkstoffe & Mehr GmbH
Anna-Theresa Kluchert
Phone: +49 (0)2402 1202-103
E-mail: kluchert(at)kerschgens.de
www.kerschgens.de

October 6, 2022

The annual meeting of NORDWEST Handel AG’s steel trading association took place on September 15 and 16, 2022. The highlight of this year’s meeting was the presentation of the association’s sustainability award to specialist retailers and suppliers.

“Finally back together” was the motto of this year’s meeting of NORDWEST Handel AG’s steel trading association; the event took place in the Bavarian town of Bad Gögging and was attended by roughly 200 guests. 

The highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the sustainability award to specialist retailers and suppliers. Kerschgens received one of the awards in the specialist retailer category. 

An independent jury consisting of Oliver Ellermann of BDS and Andreas Schneider of Stahlmarkt Consult reviewed the numerous applications. Among other things, they rated the strategic significance of the described sustainability measures, the transparency of their benefits and the measurability of target achievement. Three specialist retailers and three suppliers fulfilled all of the selection criteria; they each received a bag of mixed seeds for a wildflower meadow and are now proud sponsors of a piece of beech forest in Germany’s Eifel region.

Jörg Simon, member of the NORDWEST management board, said: “With this award, we hope to motivate our specialist retailers and suppliers to keep achieving top scores in this area and to set an example for more sustainability and climate protection in our industry.”

Winners in the specialist retailer category:
– Kerschgens Werkstoffe & Mehr GmbH
– Friedrich Kicherer GmbH & Co. KG
– J.N. Kreiller KG

Winning suppliers:
– Duferco Travi
– Feralpi Stahl
– Marcegaglia

August 23, 2022

On September 1, 2022, Kerschgens Werkstoffe & Mehr will become the new proprietor of Carlier Blechbearbeitungs GmbH, a company with a long history in Aachen.

The tinsmith’s shop founded by Franz Carlier at Blücherplatz in Aachen in 1945 quickly grew into a sheet metal working company. Over several generations, the company developed into a modern production site based in Rottstraße and today, it stands for quality, variety and experience in sheet metal working, as it has for more than 75 years.

However, until a short while ago, Carlier’s future hung in the balance, as the family-owned business did not have a successor. A valued customer relationship has now led to a new perspective that gives Sofia Carlier-Bertino, CEO of Carlier Blechbearbeitungs GmbH, cause for optimism: “Like many small and medium-sized companies, we had to face the highly emotional issue of generational change. As there was no successor within the family, we were looking for new possibilities to keep the business running and live up to our responsibility for our employees and customers. The takeover by Kerschgens – also a regional, family-owned company that is known for its reliability and, like us, values long-term partnerships – really is a stroke of luck for us! Times have changed – and even if, after so many generations, we couldn’t find a solution within the family, we are confident that good things lie ahead for Carlier Blechbearbeitungs GmbH.“

Very little will change for Carlier’s employees and customers in the wake of the acquisition. The jobs at the company site in Aachen and the product and service portfolio will be preserved: “We are thrilled to be able to expand our Kerschgens service portfolio through this acquisition. The services offered by both companies already complement each other very well. That is why Carlier will remain in Aachen and keep offering all the services its customers have come to know and appreciate. We will work with Ms. Carlier-Bertino, who is staying on as an adviser, to create even more value for our customers.”

In future, Kerschgens will have a staff of 247 at its locations in Stolberg, Bitburg, Würselen, Trier and Aachen.

July 1, 2022

Ladies in Black, a member of the German volleyball league, is happy to welcome a new arrival. This time, it’s not a new player that has found her way to Aachen, but a new regional business partner: Kerschgens Werkstoffe & Mehr.

Ladies in Black, Aachen’s very own women’s volleyball team and a member of the German volleyball league, is introducing another new arrival. But this time, it’s not a new player that has found her way to Aachen, but a new partner from the regional business community: Kerschgens Werkstoffe & Mehr.

Founded in 1876, Kerschgens is not only a supplier of high-quality steel, stainless steel and aluminum. The family-owned company has also established itself as a leading materials supplier, provider of customized services and a strong partner for customers in structural engineering, construction, industry and mechanical engineering. In addition to the headquarters in Stolberg, the company maintains sites in Bitburg, Trier and Würselen.

“We are thrilled to have found a new regional partner in Kerschgens. This family business is the perfect fit for the Ladies in Black family of partners. Our thanks to Felix Herbort and his team”, said Nhu-Khan Pham, marketing coordinator of the Ladies in Black in Aachen.

Like the Ladies, Kerschgens is all about succeeding as a team: Personal advice, a comprehensive product range, state-of-the-art production facilities, customized preprocessing services and reliable delivery schedules offer an added value that places Kerschgens at the top of the industry. Kerschgens always gives 100%, whether as a one-stop materials supplier or as an employer. As a medium-sized family-owned company, Kerschgens is a flexible and reliable partner that follows clear values and takes its responsibilities seriously. Its employees enjoy an interesting and diverse range of duties as part of a great team, excellent future prospects and the possibility of working independently and planning their lives as they wish.

Felix Herbort, Managing Director of Kerschgens Werkstoffe & Mehr, emphasizes the shared values of the new partners: “We are happy to be able to support the Ladies in Black as a sponsoring partner from July 1, 2022 onward, and to accompany them on their journey! The Ladies in Black stand for passion, team spirit, fairness and top performance. As an innovative family business from this region, we can identify with these values. That is why we have decided to lend our “steely” support to this volleyball team. We are looking forward to the coming season and wish our Ladies all the best!”

It’s not just Felix Herbort and Kerschgens that are excited about the new season, but also many other partners and, of course, the legendary fans of the Ladies in Black. They won’t have to wait long. The first players will begin their individual training in late July, in advance of the team training that starts in August. But before then, two secrets will certainly be unveiled in the near future: the team’s missing twelfth player – and the match schedule.