Unger Stahlbau

Unger Stahlbau can offer the perfect one-stop-shop for steel construction projects
Steel in style

Unger Stahlbau can offer the perfect one-stop-shop for steel construction projects

Aclear commitment to growth, flexibility and uncompromised quality has made Unger Stahlbau the market leader in Austria and helped earn it a leading position among the top five steel construction companies in Europe. Giving a brief overview of the business, Alexander Burdiak, deputy managing director for the organisationcomments: “As one of Europe’s leading steel construction companies, Unger Stahlbau has developed its portfolio from its core business, steel construction, to the realisation of turnkey projects, taking on the responsibility of general contractor and real estate contracting.”

The Unger Steel Group was established and developed around Unger Stahlbau Ges.m.b.H, one of Europe’s leading steel construction companies, which has acquired anexcellent reputation for on-schedule delivery of turnkey constructions. Furthermore, the Unger International division is responsible for the complete development, construction and management of the Group’s own and other projects. This part of the organisation develops projects of any kind – from hotels and offices to logistics centres and production plants, as well as warehouses. All of these services perfectly complement the construction activities of Unger Stahlbau.

Today, the company has coordination and planning offices in Vienna, Innsbruck, Munich, Budapest, Bucharest, Moscow, Amman, Tirana, Cork, Sofia, Warsaw, Prague, Zagreb, Kiev, Belgrade, and Dubai; sales of 150 million euros and a workforce of 1200. More than 60 per cent of the business volume is earned outside of Austria, with plans to expand the current total of 16 plants already underway.

Alexander explains: “Expansion into new countries is currently in full swing. The construction of a new plant in Sharjah, which started operations at the beginning of April 2007, and is producing structural steel components with a yearly output of 50,000 tonnes of steel, was an important move for us, but it will not be the last step in the company’s expansion history.”

This new addition to the group saw the beginnings of Unger Steel Middle East FZE. Now the company has plans to erect another new plant in Russia. Alexander continues: “The new site will be in the major Russian city of Kaluga, and will provide jobs for about 200 employees. Approximately 17 million euros will be invested in
this plant, which will include a production area of 20,000 metres square and rail connections.”

He adds: “This investment was necessary in order to support both regular customers as they move into the Russian market, and also the expansion plans of Russian investors. The plant in Kaluga will offer the same comprehensive field of activities for the realisation of different building projects, as in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.”

The services of Unger Stahlbau combined with those of Unger International ensure a full offering to the customer – everything from property procurement, calculation of profitability and financing consultation to the operation and supply of energy, and successful completion of each turnkey project. The business’ steel components are engineered and produced in Oberwart, Austria, and soon also Kaluga, with the most state-of-the-art, quality-tested technology. In addition, optimised logistics ensure the transport of the components by railway, ship or lorry to building sites within a radius of 2500 kilometres from each of the Group’s locations.

The Unger name is synonymous with the highest quality in steel construction and ready-to-use solutions, and its slogan ‘steel in perfect style’ reinforces the message – Unger’s products will always be of extremely high quality and design. This guarantee of quality is accompanied by experience in many different areas.

Alexander explains: “Glacier and earthquake endangered regions, such as Romania, Turkey and Iran or the extreme conditions of the Middle East, set more demanding
requirements for steel construction. We have successfully mastered these challenges and we have now established ourselves as a partner for projects in difficult circumstances. The most state-of-the-art technologies and comprehensive local and expert knowledge ensures the on-schedule commissioning of these projects.”

Many buildings have been the result of Unger’s experience in these locations, including an earthquakesafe business tower with ‘American’ steel construction in Bucharest, and also the construction of sport and leisure facilities, such as the football stadium in Salzburg, the ski hall of Bispingen, the mountain restaurant at the Pardatschgrat in Ischgl, and the mountain and valley stations for the ski runs of Galzig, St Anton. In fact, this last project is especially significant for Unger as it received the first prize at the first Austrian Steel Construction Awards 2007, in recognition for the company’s work with the technically outstanding project ‘Galzig-Bahn’.

It is projects such as this that show the comprehensive expertise of Unger Stahlbau and the new plants in Sharjah and Kaluga are further milestones on the Group’s expansion path. Looking to the future, Alexander concludes: “Our focus for the next few years will be to concentrate on the central and eastern European markets, not only because of remarkable projects like the Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014 and Euro 2012 football championships in Ukraine, but also for other opportunities, such as the growing Russian market. The main challenge for Unger Steel Middle East in the future will be to prove that we can fulfil our customers’ needs. Overall we want to become the international leading player for construction projects based on our core business – steel construction.”