The Wilo Group has expanded its sponsorship to include the BVB women’s handball team. Wilo has provided support for Borussia Dortmund as a champion partner for more than a decade and also as a sustainability partner since 2023. Thanks to the additional commitment, the two long-established Dortmund companies are now strengthening their partnership beyond football.
Technical University Dortmund has appointed new members to its University Council. Deputy Minister Katrin Linssen presented the appointment certificates to the new members of the University Councilon behalf of the Minister for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ina Brandes. Oliver Hermes also received this honour due to his special entrepreneurial commitment to Dortmund as a science location.
More than 2,000 exhibitors from 54 countries registered for the ISH 2023. And Wilo was there. International water, heating and ventilation experts met from 13 to 17 March at the world’s leading trade fair for HVAC and water in Frankfurt am Main. At its approximately 800-square-metre booth, Wilo demonstrated its solutions for meeting the industry’s increased environmental requirements and for easy commissioning, operation and maintenance. Among those attending the fair were Klara Geywitz, Federal Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Building, and Tarek Al-Wazir, Hesse’s Minister for Economic Affairs, Energy, Transport and Housing. Wilo was one of only four manufacturers that the politicians visited at the ISH.
Under the patronage of the Netherlands and Tajikistan, the United Nations hosted the 2023 Water Conference in New York from 22 to 24 March. The internationally acclaimed conference that attracts pre-eminent participants was dedicated to the sustainable use of water. A German delegation led by the Federal Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection attended the conference. Wilo was represented by Dr Dirk Wittenberg, Senior Vice President of the Strategic Business Unit for Water Treatment. Alongside participants from politics and civil society (NGOs), Wilo is the only industrial company that was invited to participate.
The Wilo Group launched its e-commerce platform in China. Following initial tests in Europe, the company’s own global solution was rolled out in the People’s Republic within a very short time. Sales in the double-digit million range were already transacted through the platform in the first six months following the launch.
In cooperation with the German-African Business Association, the Wilo Group welcomed around one hundred high-ranking guests from business, politics and society to the Wilo business conference “Building Bridges – Africa” at the Wilopark on 16 May. The aim of the event was to increase the visibility of and intensify German business activities on the African continent.
The Wilo Group has been awarded the German Brand Award. The award ceremony in Berlin saw the technology group receive the prestigious prize in the category of “Brand Communication – Fairs & Exhibitions” for its factory tours at the Wilopark in Dortmund. Wilo additionally won the prize in the “Brand Communication – Storytelling & Content Marketing” category for its 2021 Annual Report.
With the ceremonial reopening of a hub in Nairobi that has been expanded to include state-of-the-art assembly, testing and training capacities, Wilo strengthened its presence in East Africa in July, reaffirming its ambition to help shape the sustainable development of the African continent.
The Wilo Group celebrated breaking the ground for the expansion of its plant in Dubai in July. The construction measures will double the production area and capacity and triple the warehouse capacity. Wilo is looking to meet the increase demand in the MENA region with this investment. Wilo already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Investment of Saudi Arabia in March to expand its presence in the kingdom.
An investment in climate protection: a ground-breaking ceremony marked the start of the construction of an in-house local heating network at the Wilo site in Hof. The network will soon be supplied by a biogas plant and a wood chip heating system on neighbouring farms. In future, the Wilo plant in Hof will be supplied exclusively with heat generated from biomass.
The Wilo Group has opened a new plant in India. A sustainable and ultra-modern high-tech production complex has been built on a 94,000 square metre site on Kesurdi in the west of the country. The technology group uses the plant to manufacture premium pump systems for water management in India, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.
“Elite sports-friendly Company 2023”: the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) awarded this honour to Wilo for its long-standing commitment to professional development opportunities for elite athletes, and in particular its partnership with the German Men’s Eight rowing team.
Following on from the new plant in India, Wilo also opened high-tech production premises in the Chinese city of Changzhou. The Wilo Changzhou Park includes a factory and office building as well as research and development facilities over an area totalling 56,000 square metres. The Wilo Group will manufacture around 3 million highly efficient pumps and 3.5 million electric motors here every year.
The Wilo Group organised its annual industry conference in Singapore for the first time. Supported by Enterprise Singapore and the German Asia-Pacific Business Association and organised under the motto “Smart Urban Areas – Connecting Minds for a Multilateral World”, the conference brought together Wilo’s expertise in the area of smart and sustainable water solutions and Singapore’s role as a real-world urban laboratory.
EcoVadis has once again awarded the Wilo Group a platinum medal for its commitment to sustainability. Wilo has thus received the rating agency’s highest award for the second year running. Only 1 percent of the more than 100,000 companies assessed by EcoVadis each year are awarded the platinum medal. EcoVadis is one of the most renowned sustainability ratings agencies worldwide.
Pioneering digital spirit meets artificial intelligence: Wilo has launched WiloGPT, an in-house AI chatbot for its employees. The tool offers similar functionality to ChatGPT and, as part of the Wilo IT infrastructure, is particularly secure when it comes to protecting data.
Wilo organised the WINGS Champions Summit for the 10th time in November. The event brings Wilo’s top innovators and experts from around the world together to discuss the latest trends in industry, science and technology. The event in 2023 also featured the presentation of the Wilo Innovation Award, which consistently honours the year’s best innovations in four categories.
As part of the German Sustainability Award (DNP), Europe’s biggest award for environmental and social commitments, Wilo and the German Sustainability Award Foundation awarded the first ever International German Sustainability Award (INDP). Two partnerships between German companies and companies based in the Global South were recognised with the International German Sustainability Award in this category: textile company Jeckybeng and its Taiwanese cooperation partner HerMin Textile, and coffee cooperative Kaffeekoop and its Rwandan partner Rwashoscco.
Wilo took part in the COP28 in Dubai, the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference. The main aim of the conference was to find ways and reach agreements to realise the Paris climate goals of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. Georg Weber, member of the Executive Board and CTO of the Wilo Group, spoke about sustainable water management during the COP28 Leadership Interviews. Because the climate crisis is also a water crisis.
The Wilo Group signed memorandums of understanding with the governments of Indonesia and Uzbekistan in December in order to define the strategic cooperation in the development of the planned visionary cities of Nusantara and Tashkent New City. Wilo had already strengthened its connections with Southeast Asia in May when Oliver Hermes engaged in a dialogue at the Hannover Messe trade fair with Dr Bambang Susantono, Chair of the Nusantara National Capital Authority, who is responsible in this capacity for the planning and construction of the new Indonesian capital in the east of the island of Borneo.
Green light for an extraordinary project: Together with the honorary chair of the Supervisory Board of the Wilo Group, Dr Jochen Opländer, the Wilo Executive Board broke ground for the construction of the new Health Cube at the Wilopark on 15 December. Wilo employees worldwide and throughout the entire Dortmund region will benefit from the innovative health centre.
