Start-up Zei-Tec builds its own factory

The Aalen-based company wants to build cores for transformers. A first factory is being built in Wasseralfingen for 34 million euros.

Zei-Tec has received a grant of 7.4 million euros from the Federal Ministry for the Environment. The Aalen-based company plans to use the money to build a factory in Wasseralfingen to produce energy-saving transformer iron cores. The factory will cost a total of 34 million euros. "On the road to climate neutrality, we need lots of good ideas and innovations that save energy and resources," says Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter (SPD), Parliamentary State Secretary at the Ministry of the Environment, who handed over the funding decision. "What is being created here in Aalen also has an impact beyond the region. The project is exemplary in many respects because it not only saves energy, but also conserves water and other valuable resources."

Zei-Tec are working on 700 kilogram iron cores for transformers in power grids, which are designed to reduce line loss to a seventh. This should save costs and electricity. The new plant will employ 170 people. Zei-Tec can produce 20,000 iron cores per year. According to the start-up, the simplified production process without a blast furnace will save 66 gigawatt hours of energy and 33,600 cubic meters of water per year, 99 percent less than with conventional production.