Germany-based Variotech, which helps manufacturers improve their packaging logistics, is setting up a North American headquarters in Atlanta to focus on the automotive and electronics sectors.
The company plans to hire 20 people as a result of the move.
Variotech makes hard plastic trays customized to transport complex “work pieces,” or parts, used on the factory floor. The reusable trays — designed in partnership with the manufacturer — help reduce shipping costs and environmental impacts.
German assembly plants in the South, for instance, can send certain “two-way trays” back across the Atlantic to suppliers in Germany or elsewhere, cutting down on disposable, one-way packaging. Clients like ZF Group, which makes brake discs, have supposedly saved millions of dollars by deploying Variotech’s products.
Variotech sometimes uses 3D printing to model the trays before they go into full production; the trays are optimized to save space and can be integrated into full palletized systems for shipping across the seas. Once they arrive, certain models can also be integrated directly into factories’ automated production lines.
Variotech’s new headquarters will be at a location yet to be disclosed within Fulton County and the City of Atlanta. The investment amount was also
The company is no stranger to the area: It maintains an address and a phone line at the German-American Chamber of Commerce of the South’s office on Howell Mill Road. The chamber offers such “business representation services” to many German firms looking to build sales in the market before establishing a permanent office.
Variotech is based in the state of Lower Saxony, Germany, in the city of Nordhorn near the border with the Netherlands.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development has an office in Munich focused on recruiting European companies.
“Georgia has been cultivating relationships in Germany for more than 45 years, and we are thrilled that Variotech chose Atlanta to call home as they expand in the U.S. market,” Commissioner Pat Wilson said in a news release.
