Niko Reith visiting

Niko Reith (FDP), member of the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg, was a guest at B+B Thermo-Technik in Donaueschingen. Reith is also a member of the Donaueschingen municipal council, so he had a double interest in getting to know B+B Thermo-Technik GmbH, as it was previously known in the region through various donations and sponsorship activities, but only superficially.

B+B Thermo-Technik GmbH currently has 120 employees at its Donaueschingen site and four international branches with a further 60 employees. The company was founded in 1984 by Rudolf Boll and is now in the hands of the second generation with the managing directors Kim-Chantal Boll and Evamaria Boll-Scholte van Mast. Rudolf Boll founded the company with the production and distribution of self-developed thermocouple connectors. Today, the company develops, produces and sells industrial measurement technology worldwide, mainly in the fields of temperature, humidity and pressure. B+B products are installed, for example, in baking ovens, laboratory equipment or even in fun vehicles such as snowmobiles.

Together with Managing Director Evamaria Boll-Scholte van Mast, there was a lively exchange about what medium-sized companies need from politics today in order to remain attractive and competitive on the world market. Niko Reith is strongly committed to making the source region more attractive in order to attract skilled workers in the long term and thus to counteract the extreme shortage of skilled workers, which B+B is also experiencing.

The topic of immigration and the associated listed shortage occupations was also discussed, which are no longer up to date today, as companies like B+B are not only dependent on immigration for skilled workers, but also on immigration for open unskilled jobs. According to Evamaria Boll-Scholte van Mast, refugees in permanent employment must have a real chance of being allowed to stay in Germany in the long term, regardless of whether the country they come from is currently listed as a safe country.

Another important point is also more straightforward access to funding and grants for SMEs to invest in innovation, digitization and growth. Often, the process is non-transparent and highly bureaucratic, so people often don’t even bother with it due to time constraints.

There was also a lot of interest in the recently conducted mental risk assessment, which was successfully carried out at B+B together with the startup ImproveMid and reported on in SWR television. Especially in times of Corona, it was an incredibly valuable insight for B+B that our employees are doing well and that they have understood and support our implemented measures.

In addition, Niko Reith had the chance to experience the development and production site at first hand and was thus able to get an idea of the innovative technologies in which B+B invests in order to increase market share and to maintain the site in Donaueschingen in the long term.