With a floor area of around 5,000 square metres, the new production hall is about half as large again as the old building. MCZ, short for Mayer & Cie. Czech Republic, has been a member of the Mayer Group since 2011. Over the past five years, it has made a decisive contribution to the Albstadt-based company’s success story.

“2011, the year in which MCZ became a part of the Mayer Group, was a landmark year for our company,” said Mayer & Cie. Managing Director Benjamin Mayer in his speech at the inauguration of the new building last Thursday in Vsetín. “We had just recovered from the setbacks of the economic crisis. We then had to set the right course in order to remain competitive in view of the growing competitive pressure.” An opportunity that arose was to take over the insolvent Czech knitting machine manufacturer Amtek. “That was a risk for our company,” Benjamin Mayer recalls, “because at the time we ourselves had only just emerged from planned insolvency.”

Over the years, the 2011 decision has proved right without the slightest doubt. Initially, only individual assembly groups were transferred to the new production site, but they were joined in 2012 by the first knitting machines. In 2013, only two years after the takeover, one Mayer machine in four was assembled at the Czech works. In 2014, MCZ was quality certified to DIN ISO standards.

The latest sign of this success is the modern company premises just outside the town of Vsetín. With its floor area of around 5,000 square metres, it optimally fits Mayer & Cie.’s work processes. MCZ’s 70-plus employees can here assemble knitting machines in tried and tested Mayer quality in state-ofthe-art conditions.

At present a little over one in three Mayer machines and various assembly groups come from the Czech Republic. S and D line machines account for a large proportion of them. With these knitting machines, Mayer & Cie. serves the midrange price segment most successfully. The S4 3.2 II and D4 2.2 II, both part of this product range, are the long-established circular knitting machine manufacturer’s best-selling machines by far. Mayer & Cie. has received over 150 orders each already this year.

The great popularity of these machines, Benjamin Mayer noted in his speech, showed why the Czech production site was the right decision, especially from the strategic viewpoint. “These machines,” he said, “enable us to keep our competitors at bay in the price-sensitive segment, to raise the barriers for new competitors and to offer new customers an easier entry into the Mayer product range.”