On January 14, 2019, we broke ground for our new tool-making hall in Härkingen, Switzerland. Actual construction began shortly thereafter in February, with the work now coming along nicely. Get a look at this major project at our headquarter location here.
The health and safety of our employees is of vital importance to us. That is why we have set ourselves the goal of minimizing the risk of workplace accidents at our 13 RONAL GROUP production sites. If an employee is ill, unwell or injured, the medical department at each plant is there to look after our colleague. But what happens in the event of an unforeseen incident, like the one at our plant in Spain at the beginning of the year?
For us, our PLANBLUE sustainability concept means taking care not only of the environment but also of society – on both a large and small scale. To avoid the use of paper cups, we at RONAL AG in Härkingen (Switzerland) introduced PLANBLUE coffee cups some time ago. Now, we wanted to provide employees with matching glasses – and not just any glasses with PLANBLUE printed on them.
Each year in the summer, the RONAL GROUP offers young people trainee positions in various technical and commercial professions. Suruthy, 19, is currently wrapping up her training as a management assistant, spending her final few days in the Marketing department at RONAL AG in Härkingen. In this interview, she tells us what she liked about her traineeship and which challenges she faced in the last few months in these extraordinary circumstances.
Success requires passion, trust, appreciation and respect. These are the pillars of our corporate culture, and our collaboration with “Don’t Touch Racing”. This year, we will once again sponsor the German “Don’t Touch Racing” truck race team with wheels. Right now, the races are still taking place on animated tracks in the simulator as the “ETRC Digital Racing Challenge”, but the season is officially set to kick-off in “real life” on August 29 in Most, Czech Republic.
In 2017, we launched our Bike2RONAL campaign as part of PLANBLUE, where employees from all locations could collect kilometers by commuting to work the environmentally friendly way, on inline skates, on foot, by electric automobile or using public transportation. Last September, the project was reorganized and started back up under the name RONWAY.
In the past year, the RONAL GROUP celebrated 50 years in existence with all employees at all locations around the world. The anniversary roadshow, which was named “Anniversary World Tour 2019” began at the beginning of May at our headquarters in Härkingen in Switzerland and ended in November in Nantou, Taiwan, the location of the subsidiary company Fullchamp. Our presence at trade fairs also fully reflected the anniversary year. And last but not least, on the occasion of our milestone birthday, we also issued our cult wheel RONAL R50 AERO in gold.
As in the past years, the RONAL GROUP is once again attending the Essen Motor Show, the greatest tuning spectacle of the year, from November 29 to December 8. There is lots going on at our booth in hall 7, this time expanded to include a special anniversary area!
On October 18, we celebrated the inauguration of the RONAL training workshop in Querétaro. Plant manager Stephan Jancke, our CEO Yvo Schnarrenberger and Deputy CEO Oliver Brauner cut the ribbon.
SPEEDLINE TRUCK, our truck wheel brand, is one of the leading suppliers of forged light alloy wheels for commercial vehicles, trailers and coaches in Europe. For the first time, we will attend Busworld Europe in Brussels from October 18 to 23, 2019, presenting our product range for various bus models, plus accessories in Hall 1, Stand 130e.
What began as a crazy idea at the beginning of the year came to fruition in the last weekend of August. Following the legendary 24-hour Nürburgring race with the SPEEDLINE RACING car team in June and the 24-hour “Rad am Ring” cycling race in July, the RONAL GROUP and Pirelli took part in yet another long-distance event: the ADAC GTC Bavarian 24-hour go kart race in Wackersdorf, Germany.
This year, the 16th “Rad am Ring” spectacle, now as legendary as the 24-hour car race, took place at Nürburgring. For the first time ever, we took part in collaboration with our partner Pirelli, with a total of four SPEEDLINE RACING teams.
This year, the RONAL GROUP will celebrate its 50th anniversary at the IAA car show in Frankfurt am Main. From September 12-13, we will be presenting various highlights at our stand CO2 in hall 4.1, along with an absolute sensation: the world’s first approved one-piece 3D-printed alloy wheel!
This year, the RONAL GROUP, in collaboration with partner Pirelli and around 150 volunteers, once again attended the 24-hour race in “Green Hell”, where our colleagues assumed a wide range of responsibilities.
This autumn, our second plant in Teruel, Spain, is celebrating its bicentenary. One of our colleagues suggested a special way to mark the occasion on World Environment Day, an initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme.
The RONAL GROUP is always on the lookout for talented and motivated young newcomers! We visited universities in Switzerland to promote our technical careers. In addition, we recently congratulated two trainees on successfully completing their apprenticeships!
Our Asian subsidiary Fullchamp produces around 200,000 high-quality forged wheels for the commercial vehicle sector and our SPEEDLINE TRUCK brand for us in Nantou (Taiwan) each year. We asked Yahn-Shen Tsai, managing director at Fullchamp since 2013, a few questions.
With this award, the government of the Spanish autonomous community of Aragón certifies that RONAL IBÉRICA has achieved more than 500 points in the European excellence model. For our Spanish subsidiary, this is the admission ticket to an exclusive club of only 15 companies to have been awarded this seal.
In the middle of April, our trainees at our Härkingen location in Switzerland took an annual field trip. Michelle (design engineer trainee) and Levin (management assistant trainee) summarized the eventful day in the following report.
On October 10, 2017 our second plant in Teruel (Spain) was opened with a ceremony. Now, around 18 months later, managers from various departments of the company look back to the construction and start-up period and report on how they experienced it all.
This year, for the first time, the RONAL GROUP subsidiaries in Mexico, acting together with 2b Racing, will be on the starting line as the RONAL Racing Team, sponsoring the NASCAR Peak México Series – and bearing number 50, of course, just right for our 50th anniversary.
In the second part of our interview with Christian Götz, the former active member of Team KA-RaceIng of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) tells us of the challenges, advantages and highlights of his time spent in the Formula Student.
As in 2018, RONAL GmbH will once again be sponsoring one of the three racing cars of the KA-RaceIng team from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2019, with which the students will participate in the Formula Student international design competition.
The international RONAL GROUP offers young people solid training in a range of different careers in commerce and technology. Lejla (19) is currently in the third year of her commercial apprenticeship at the RONAL AG headquarters in Härkingen. We asked her a few questions.
September 20-27, 2018 SPEEDLINE TRUCK, the RONAL GROUP’s truck wheel brand, exhibited its products at IAA Commercial Vehicles in Hanover. Our trade show visitors who took a voluntary survey had the chance to win a SPEEDLINE TRUCK wheel engraved by wheel tattoo artist Eddy Schuster. The exclusive prize has now been presented.
Geothermal energy is sustainable, ecological and sparing in the use of resources. In Forst, geothermal energy is used all year round for heating and cooling. A heat pump is powered using electricity from renewable energy sources, so in terms of its energy supply, the site is largely CO2-neutral.
We were back at the Essen Motor Show from December 1 to 9 2018, where we presented our new products from the RONAL, SPEEDLINE CORSE and SPEEDLINE TRUCK brands at our stand.
National Future Day sees a variety of companies, organizations and universities throughout Switzerland open their doors. Boys and girls from the 5th to 7th grades can accompany mentors while they are working and gain an insight into their daily routine. As in previous years, some students spent this special day here in Härkingen.
The international RONAL GROUP Cycling Team covered a total of 7,500 km and more than 41 km of vertical gain in August 2018 – split between two traditional events through and over some of the passes in the Swiss Alps (the Oberalp, Susten, Brünig, Grimsel, Furka, Nufenen and Gotthard passes).
A special event was held in Bern at the end of September as part of this year’s meeting of the executive board members from all our sites: a special motor racing event – with 0% CO2 emissions.
Alongside Trucker Princess Christina Scheib, we had another exciting visitor to our stand: on Saturday 22 September and Sunday 23 September, wheel tattoo artist Eddy from Berserker Metal Tattoo & Paradise Lost Tattoo engraved some of our SPEEDLINE TRUCK wheels in a live demonstration. You can see the result below!
