Technology start-up Cevotec acquires strategic partner

The Austrian machine builder GFM is taking a 49 percent stake in the start-up from Unterhaching. There is also a change in the management.

Cevotec has secured a strategic partner. GFM from Steyr, a provider of high-tech industrial systems, is taking a 49 percent stake in the technology start-up. Nothing was disclosed about the purchase price. The previous business angels and investors, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern Kapital and Founder.org, are selling their shares. "With GFM as a new partner, Cevotec enters a new phase of the company's development," says Thorsten Gröne, CEO and co-founder of Cevotec. "GFM shares our vision of enabling manufacturers to produce complex fiber composites in high volumes and quality." GFM manufactures radial forging machines and milling machines for crankshafts, among other products.

Cevotec is a manufacturer of fiber composite production systems. The systems can combine different materials in one product, and the technology is particularly in demand in the aerospace and medical technology industries. "Cevotec has developed a very impressive technology for the automated processing of composite materials and I look forward to their future innovations," Michael Kralowetz, chairman and managing director of GFM, explains his investment.

Felix Michl, co-founder and previous CTO of Cevotec, is retiring from the management and will assist the start-up in an advisory capacity. "After we have reached this important milestone with GFM, I would like to focus on new challenges and also spend more time with my family," says Michl. Florian Lenz will become Technical Director at Cevotec in September. Most recently, he was head of strategic business development and innovation at Leichtbau-Zentrum Sachsen, a component development company based in Dresden.