All good company stories start in a garage. Or in the basement – like those from EA Elektro-Automatik from Viersen. Founder Helmut Nolden built his first batteries there more than 50 years ago and sold them for good money, became increasingly successful and founded his company in 1974. It is the beginning of a great success story – because today the former family business is one of the leading manufacturers in the field of power electronics in Europe, employs around 450 people in Viersen alone and has expanded into the USA and China.
However, no longer under Nolden’s leadership – he sold EA Elektro-Automatik to the Munich investment company Bengal many years ago so that the company could grow appropriately. It now belongs to the US company Tektronix and supports other companies in the energy transition. For example, manufacturers of batteries for electric cars: EA Elektro-Automatik uses its software to simulate electric cars and, on the one hand, tests the quality of the batteries and, on the other hand, helps to further develop them.
But the aviation industry also benefits from the company’s technology – among other things, it checks whether aircraft with hydrogen-powered fuel cells are ready for the market, for example at Airbus. “We have even developed a process with which we can then feed most of the energy that we use during our test runs back into the power grid,” says Adrian Rosa, head of the marketing department.
With its business model, EA Elektro-Automatik won a prize in the “NRW – Changing Economy” competition, which the Rheinische Post organizes every two years with the “Land of Ideas” initiative and the General-Anzeiger Bonn. “We were very happy about that, because our heart continues to beat in North Rhine-Westphalia despite the expansion,” says Rosa.
