The Festo Power Up initiative for food and beverage machine builders aims to spur the efficient adoption of electric automation and in the process support the development of the next generation of compact, flexible, energy efficient, and data-rich machines.

In Europe, Germany's mechatronics experts are simply top: at the European Skills Championship EuroSkills Gdańsk 2023 in Poland last September, Daniel Schmid and Timo Oßwald, both apprentices at Festo, won the gold medal in the skill mechatronics. They thus completed the extremely successful record of the German national team, which came second behind Switzerland in the 'Best of Nations' ranking in 42 trades.

Siemens Xcelerator, the open digital business platform, creates an open ecosystem for collaboration between customers, Siemens, and certified partners, from large technology companies to independent software developers. Festo and Siemens announced their latest partnership at this year’s Hannover Messe trade fair. Festo has joined the Industrial Edge ecosystem. To kick this off, Festo is offering the Festo AX Data access app, effective ...

Oliver Jung (61) will leave his position as Chairman of the Management Board of Festo SE & Co. KG as planned on expiry of his current mandate. The Supervisory Board has appointed Thomas Böck (52) as his successor. Mr. Böck will join the family-owned company as the new Chairman of the Management Board on 1 January 2024.

Festo introduces the CMMT MP family of multi-protocol servo drives. Every drive in this family is configurable as EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, PROFINET, and Modbus TCP. Using this single-family multi-protocol strategy, machine builders supporting multiple communications protocols can reduce servo-drive inventories. A unified drive family improves engineering productivity through familiarity with a single platform, simplifies tech support, and gains a robust ...

With the recent introduction of its distributed I/O solution CPX-AP-A, along with its established CPX-AP-I decentralized I/O, Festo now offers a range of electric and pneumatic automation solutions that is unmatched in North America in terms of performance, flexibility, cost savings, and engineering productivity. AP stands for Automation Platform and this backplane-based remote I/O system has been in development for a decade.

Festo launches MS-Basic, a family of pneumatic service units in polymer housings that offer attractively priced components covering most application needs.

The FLAIROP (Federated Learning for Robot Picking) research project, which was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, was concluded at Festo in Esslingen-Berkheim. At the event, all project participants – as well as interested public – were on site or presented their results live from Canada.

"The shortage of skilled workers is a challenge for companies in Europe. We need to invest much more in education and training. That is why I propose to make 2023 the European Year of Skills," said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The highlight of this Year of Skills will be the 8th EuroSkills competition of professions in September in Gdańsk, Poland. Mechatronics is one of the most attractive and promising skills, and it will be ...

Festo today laid the first stone of its new plant with three construction phases, which will gradually generate 1,500 new jobs. Construction of the plant, which will be ready in 2025, will require an investment of $100 million dollars.

The Fast MDx testing system is not only a game-changer in pathogen detection, it promises to be a life saver. Available starting in June, Fast MDx is the world’s first fully automated, high-throughput, near-patient molecular diagnostic testing system.  Developed by the London, England-based social enterprise company of the same name with engineering support and automation technology from Festo, this extremely compact, mobile platform cuts ...

According to estimates, by 2025 some 600,000 tons of used batteries from electric passenger cars need to be recycled. Since batteries are energy storage devices made from valuable raw materials, this inevitably raises the question of sustainability. Festo therefore offers modular automation concepts not only for cell producing, assembling battery modules and packs, and platform integration, but also for disassembling and recycling or separating the ...

The success and reputation of electric vehicle manufacturers depend on the safe and flawless functioning of batteries. HAHN Automation Group has therefore developed a battery tester that carries out a complete test of the mobile energy storage units fully automatically. A 3-axis gantry for optical and leak tests, consisting of electric drives from Festo, takes centre stage.

Standardisation is a recipe for success for a fruitful collaboration between packaging machine manufacturers and automation specialists. The strategic partnership between Syntegon and Festo is a great example of this. Thanks to this cooperation, Syntegon was able to simplify its processes and manage the challenges posed by the pandemic and the supply chain crisis more effectively.

If there’s one thing the corona pandemic has taught us, it is that laboratories place tremendous importance on high sample throughput rates. Even with highly qualified laboratory personnel, this demand can no longer be met. There’s no getting round the automation of laboratory processes. That’s why MolGen in the Netherlands developed PurePrep TTR, which can prepare 320 patient samples per hour for molecular downstream processing. And ...

The Festo Group achieved double-digit growth for another year in a row. Sales rose by 13.4% to €3.81 billion in 2022 (previous year €3.36 billion). Festo intends to continue growing in 2023. Innovative automation is the enabler for the industrial transformation towards renewable energies, sustainable production, hydrogen and circular economy.