“We are aiming at long-term partnerships across the Middle East and targeting 20 percent of total investment in the Middle East,” said Martin Reichle, CEO of R&M, during the R&M Cube presentation ceremony here last week. He referred to the clearly stated growth strategy and to growing demand and the opportunities it offers.
The pioneering R&M Cube was presented to a group of journalists from the Middle East and Europe. The imposing new company premises at Binzstrasse 32 cover a gross surface area of 16,000 square meters on five floors and comprise production, logistics, innovation and development as well as product management. The modern building also sets new standards in energy supply.
Company founder Hans Reichle sees the new R&M Cube as a reflection of the company’s proven values and as a promising signal for the future. “After years of negotiations and tactical maneuvering, we succeeded in putting together three lots to form an ideal property of 16,000 square meters for a new building we hoped would be exactly as we envisaged and required. We evaluated the project plans in the context of a clearly defined growth strategy. The R&M clearly reflects our values,” Reichle said.
“About 70 percent of our production employees work here, so this noteworthy investment also expresses the clear commitment R&M feels toward Switzerland as a production location,” he added.
Martin said the Cube also embodies a milestone in the company’s history. “It was planned in good economic times and built in bad economic times. It will be used in times of an economic and technological upswing,” he said.
“Our proven willingness to innovate and our powers of innovation are precisely the traits that allow us to launch new innovations constantly. The market and our customers also push us to innovate. This gives us momentum and competitive advantage,” said Martin.
The new headquarters symbolize R&M’s belief in the future and the innovative strength of a company, which, in its 46th year, provides around 600 jobs worldwide. Even in economically difficult times the company has gained market shares. And so R&M looks forward to the future with optimism.
This confidence, Martin said, is founded on the business trend during the second half of the year, with evidence of a clear recovery in sales in a number of dynamic growth regions. R&M has steadily expanded its scope of business in recent years, improving its leading position in the Swiss market and positioning itself in important markets internationally. “We now sell 75 percent of our cabling solutions for communication networks abroad. The market potential is immense, both in markets already being well served and in emerging markets that have begun to modernize their communication infrastructure in recent years,” Martin said.
R&M, which has a regional office in Dubai, successfully completed end-to-end network solutions for King Khaled University Hospital (KKUH), Riyadh, utilizing its innovative line of Cat. 6A shielded STP (shielded twisted pair) cabling.
Due to the Kingdom’s initiative to provide world-class health care services for its citizens, KKUH needed to upgrade and implement a state of the art network infrastructure as the foundation for offering top line healthcare services.
R&M wants its most innovative-shielded solution, the Cat. 6A shielded STP cables, to be used throughout the site to achieve optimal network performance and eliminate the effects from medical imaging equipment, said Jean-Pierre Labry, R&M’s managing director for Middle East & Africa.
“R&M cabling solutions cater to the growing demand by organizations and enterprises for high speed uninterrupted access to information across their networks. Supported by local offices in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt, R&M is among the top three players in the structured cabling field in the Middle East,” Labry added.
Hans Hess, chairman of the board of directors of R&M, spoke of sustainability as R&M’s dominant corporate philosophy. For R&M, sustainability is divided into three main faces: Long-term thinking, total corporate responsibility and social equity. These are the main pillars of all-encompassing sustainability. “R&M is committed to quality and innovation, to a management approach that conserves resources and minimizes environmental impact and in general to a sustainability-based preservation of value. This will result in growth, more profit and a better return on the capital employed,” Hess said.
In his presentation, R&M Marketing Manager Markus Schlageter explained how communication and networks shape our lives more than ever before and how they have become a key factor for the future. He said it is our ambition to help that future, given that the demands of our IT society are increasing. R&M sees its job as making the foundations of any network as stable as possible.
