Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel Visits Schaeffler Group

Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Schaeffler Group Amid enormous media attention, Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the Schaeffler Group¡¯s stand with an area of over 930 square meters at the Hanover Fair. The company, with its brands INA, FAG and LuK, is presenting innovations and solutions at the fair dealing with the main themes of energy efficiency, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increasing performance. Partner, Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler and Dr. Juergen M. Geissinger, President and CEO, welcomed the delegation that included Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Lower Saxony¡¯s Prime Minister, Christian Wulff and the Federal Minister of Science, Anette Schavan. Mrs. Schaeffler emphasized the importance of research and development within the Schaeffler Group. Approx 5,000 employees work in this sector worldwide and register annually around 1,200 inventions that result in over 800 patent applications. One of these is the twin tandem wheel bearing that Dr. Geissinger presented to the guests. This innovative new bearing is a four-row angular contact ball bearing that can be used, for example, in small vans to replace conventional tapered roller bearings and to halve the frictional resistance. This reduces the fuel consumption of the vehicle by around 1.5 percent and, therefore, also the emissions: If all small vans were equipped with these twin tandem wheel bearings, the emissions of CO2 into the environment would be reduced by half a million tons annually.