History

The development of innovatherm - from the beginnings until today...

The innovatherm success story began more than 60 years ago with the founding of the Manfred Leisenberg KG, which specialized in the development and manufacture of burners (heavy oil and gas) for kilns and dryers in the ceramic industry.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Leisenberg, Managing Director of Manfred Leisenberg KG, recognized the growing need for integrated system solutions that had to include thermal process technologies and automation concepts in addition to raw material knowledge. Together with the company Hans Lingl Anlagenbau, at that time a leading international manufacturer of machinery and equipment for the heavy clay industry, Leisenberg founded innovatherm in 1991. Since then, innovatherm has specialized in the modernization and process optimization of existing kiln and drying plants in the ceramic industry, as well as in the primary and secondary aluminum industry. With impressive success. Our process engineers have unmatched technical expertise and vast knowledge. Our quality promise is the DNA of innovatherm. Innovatherm was certified to DIN EN ISO 9001:2000 (amended to DIN EN ISO 9001:2015) as early as 1999.

After winning numerous significant orders in aluminum smelting plants from Europe, the USA as well as the Middle East, innovatherm continued its internationalization by establishing a joint venture company in Bhubaneswar/India. Representative offices in Beijing/China, Manama/Kingdom of Bahrain and in Moscow/Russian Federation followed. Finally, in July 2008, the US subsidiary Innovatherm USA Inc. was founded. The company is based in the US state of Missouri and is responsible for servicing the North American market.

Starting with a market share of less than 15%, innovatherm has become the world market leader for firing and process control systems on anode furnaces. To date, more than 260 production firing systems are in operation on over 90 different anode furnaces.

In addition, innovatherm has already started to conquer new markets since 2008: Innovatherm is now successfully present in the field of advanced flue gas cleaning (FTC) as well as in the field of firing systems for cathode and electrode production.

After Prof. Leisenberg’s and Wolfgang Uhrig’s retirement, the company was managed by Detlef Maiwald since 01.01.2016.

On 01 January 2021, the business shares of innovatherm were finally taken over 100% by Mr. Frank Appel and Mr. Andreas Lingl.

Since September 2021 Frank Appel and Andreas Lingl are Managing Directors of innovatherm. Andreas Himmelreich is Director of Sales, Christian Hoßbach is Commercial Director and Head of the Butzbach main office. Dr. Frank Heinke (Director Process Engineering), Hans-Joerg Seifert (Director of Automation and Head of our Weimar office) as well as Klaus Prinz as Head of Mechanical Design complete the management team of innovatherm.

Innovatherm is now a legally autonomous and independent company and can therefore focus even better on securing its competitive position in the long term.