Duensing to succeed Wente as ContiTech boss

It was decided at yesterday’s meeting of Continental AG’s Supervisory Board that, as of 1 May 2015, Hans-Jürgen Duensing will join the company’s Executive Board and simultaneously take charge of the ContiTech division. He will take over from Heinz-Gerhard Wente, who has requested the termination of his contract on 30 April, thus ending a career with Continental spanning more than forty years.

“We are happy to have gained a very experienced division head in Mr. Hans-Jürgen Duensing. On behalf of my colleagues on the Supervisory Board, we wish him all the best and every success as he takes up his new position,” declared chairman of Continental’s Supervisory Board, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Reitzle. He added: “We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to Mr. Heinz-Gerhard Wente for the many years he has served this company and the valuable contribution he has untiringly made. Together with his team, he has succeeded in transforming our rubber and plastics specialist ContiTech from a purely Germany company into an internationally competitive automotive supplier and industrial partner which provides an above-average contribution to the corporation’s earnings on a regular basis.”

“We are pursuing our strategic corporate goal to increase the share of our sales made with industrial customers and end users towards 40 per cent. At present, this share is approximately 28 per cent. ContiTech is making a very valuable contribution to this,” said chairman of Continental’s Executive Board, Dr. Elmar Degenhart, adding: “Hans-Jürgen Duensing is a further protagonist for this strategy on the Executive Board. He will continue to press ahead along this path.”

Duensing has worked for ContiTech for more than 20 years and been a member of the ContiTech AG Executive Board since May 2014. He holds a degree in economics, and has headed the company’s Conveyor Belt Group business unit based in Northeim (Lower Saxony, Germany), since 2005. Under his management, the Conveyor Belt Group has grown to become a leading worldwide conveyor belt system supplier, with sales of around €600 million. It currently employs around 4,000 people. Prior to that, Duensing headed the Automotive Original Equipment segment of the ContiTech Power Transmission Group for around five years in his role as a member of the management team. Continental plans to find a successor to Duensing in the Conveyor Belt Group before he leaves.