Dr. Georg Friberg new CEO of Goldschmidt / Global market leader for railway infrastructure set to increase growth worldwide
Leipzig, June 16, 2020: Goldschmidt, the global market leader for products and services for railway infrastructure with headquarters in Leipzig, has appointed Dr. Georg Friberg (53) as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He succeeds Dr. Hans-Jürgen Mundinger who enters retirement after many years of success in the global expansion of the Goldschmidt Group.
In February 2020 Dr. Friberg took up the position of Managing Director of the Goldschmidt Thermit GmbH, the Finance and Management Holding of the Goldschmidt Group. As CEO he takes on with immediate effect responsibility for the departments for strategy, business development, mergers and acquisitions, human resources, marketing and communication, and sales. In the company management, Dr. Martin Niederkrüger as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) continues to be responsible for the departments research and development, product management, quality management, environmental management, production, engineering and procurement. Sebastian Kanz, as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), is responsible for finance, controlling, IT, legal and compliance.
“With Dr. Georg Friberg we have won a very experienced and technically skilled CEO. Together with him we will continue to push our global expansion. He is the ideal successor to Dr. Hans-Jürgen Mundinger, under whose successful leadership we almost doubled our global turnover”, explains Karl T. Goldschmidt, chairman of the supervisory board of the Goldschmidt Group. “The conditions are ideal to achieve further growth. We have positioned our group under the new Goldschmidt brand in the global growth market for the mobility of the future as a leading supplier of products and services for railway infrastructure. We will continue to expand our leading position.”
Dr. Friberg has extensive experience in international corporate structures and family-run medium-sized companies. Before moving to Goldschmidt, the graduate physicist with a doctorate in electrical engineering was on the management board of LISEGA SE, a leading global specialist for industrial pipe support systems with headquarters in Zeven (Lower Saxony, Germany), for more than ten years and since August 2009 was also CEO of the company. He previously worked for ABB, a global group in the energy and automation sector, in a number of different positions.
“I have used the last few months to get to know the company and its excellent employees. Goldschmidt stands for innovative products and quality at over 24 company locations worldwide. Our products and services for the joining of rails, modern construction of railway track, and inspection and maintenance of railway infrastructure are in high demand all over world. We plan to continue investing and actively expand our range of products and services”, emphasizes Dr. Georg Friberg. “In this process we will also consider further company acquisitions or cooperation ventures in Germany and international markets.”
In March Goldschmidt presented its new brand identity. 125 years after the patenting of the Thermit® welding process on March 13, 1895, the family-owned company united all of the group companies under the Goldschmidt brand. As a leading provider of products and services for the joining of rails, modern construction of railway track, the inspection of track infrastructure and its maintenance, Goldschmidt has identified enormous potential through the increased investments worldwide in passenger and freight services.
Goldschmidt offers an extensive range of products and services worldwide for the joining of rails, grinding technology, innovative measurement and inspection technology, as well as road-rail vehicles. In the company’s Technology Innovation Center in Leipzig and in Competence Centers around the world products are constantly being improved. The products ensure that high-speed trains in China can run just as smoothly and reliably as the trams which run in European cities. Goldschmidt is systematically integrating its products in a digital network, for example, via the Dari® – Data acquisition for rail infrastructure – database system developed in-house or the Goldschmidt Digital App.