19th NIRO General Meeting at MURTFELDT: Exchange, insights and outlook for 2026

On November 6, 2025, our 19th General Meeting took place at MURTFELDT GmbH & Co. KG in Dortmund – one of the annual highlights in our network calendar. Around 60 managers from our member companies took the opportunity to meet in person, review the year 2025 and set the course for the coming year.

Insights and impulses at MURTFELDT
The 19th general meeting took place in bright and beautiful fall weather. After a welcome address by Matthias Schmitz, 1st Deputy Spokesman of the NIRO Management Board, Andreas Balla, Managing Director of MURTFELDT GmbH & Co KG, welcomed the guests and introduced his company.

MURTFELDT, a traditional supplier to the mechanical engineering industry, is now in its fourth generation as a family business. As a high-performance partner for engineering plastics and components made of engineering plastics, MURTFELDT develops individual solutions for its approximately 60,000 customers with more than 700 employees at six locations in Europe. MURTFELDT products are used in the food and beverage industry, in pharmaceutical and medical technology, in the mobility and aerospace sectors and in the construction industry. Machining, additive manufacturing, fiber composites and combined variants are the relevant manufacturing technologies. MURTFELDT works with over 200 plastics for every application. Individual components, configurable products, semi-finished products and blanks as well as complete solutions that make machines more economical, more robust, more durable or more sustainable – and therefore better overall – are the hallmarks of our member company.
Following the first presentation, the participants were given interesting insights into production during a tour of the company in four smaller groups.

The year 2025 at NIRO
After the tour, NIRO Managing Director Ingrid Lange opened the Annual General Meeting. In her report, she highlighted the wide range of activities within the scope of our network work over the past year. As in previous years, the focus was on facilitating a trusting exchange of experiences, organizing meetings and promoting knowledge transfer and innovation.

We can welcome two new member companies to NIRO in 2025: Julius vom Hofe GmbH & Co. KG from Lüdenscheid and Hoffmeier Industrieanlagen GmbH + Co. KG from Hamm are now strengthening our network.

NIRO held a total of 89 (online) events up to the beginning of November, including the popular summer barbecue during the lunch break in Dortmund harbour as a highlight. In addition to production and purchasing, the focus was on topics such as artificial intelligence, sustainability and interdisciplinary work on interface topics.We have had new digital channels since February 2025: our NIRO app and the redesigned purchasing pool area. There are currently around 630 registered users in the app, who can exchange information in 32 groups, access information and register for events.2025, the purchasing managers met at NIRO both to exchange experiences and in various negotiating groups to conclude new framework agreements with partners for our purchasing pool – including Enterprise Mobility and FedEx – as well as to reach special agreements with Diagramm Halbach GmbH & Co KG and Edenred Deutschland GmbH. Both energy pools (electricity and natural gas) could be concluded with Hanover-based enercity AG as early as the end of 2024. Ingrid Lange expressly thanked the purchasers from member companies present for their commitment to the Purchasing Working Group. They play a decisive role in ensuring that our purchasing pool currently has a sales volume of 45 million euros.In addition to individual seminars, the NIRO Academy offers two qualification programs, “NIRO Talents” and “Management Operations”, which focus on project work and networking over a longer period of time. You can find more information here.
In addition, the 2024 annual financial statements, the 2025/26 business plan and the minutes of the 2024 Annual General Meeting were approved.
Every year, a certificate is presented to members who have been part of the network for 12 years: This time, the special honor went to Metal Improvement Company, LLC from Unna.

Changes to the Executive Board
A new Executive Board was not elected. Thomas Mittag (Montanhydraulik GmbH) and Dawid Melzer (WILO SE) have been co-opted to strengthen the Board.Ingrid Lange expressed her special thanks to Josef Mertens (Montanhydraulik GmbH) for his many years of dedicated service. He is a co-founder of our network and served as 1st Deputy Chairman of the Board for 19 years.

Outlook for 2026
NIRO is looking ahead to the coming year with fresh ideas and a clear focus. The focus will continue to be on further developing our professional relationship management. This also includes further establishing and successfully utilizing the port area. We will continue to strategically expand our purchasing pool. We are focusing on new funding projects and will also continue to work on the topic of artificial intelligence. A new strategy process will be launched to ensure that our network remains vibrant and successful. Spoiler: we will be entering our 20th year in 2026.

The participants took the opportunity to network in a relaxed atmosphere over a snack at the end of the event.

We would like to thank the host team from MURTFELDT for the great support, the interesting insights during the tour of the production facility and the treats provided in the Kauerei at the get-together.

Impressions from our General Meeting 2025