Basler Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary
After the record sales year in 2017, Basler AG is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The Ahrensburg-based company can look back on an eventful and successful past. What began as a two-man operation in the technical center in Lübeck has developed into the world's leading manufacturer of industrial cameras.
When Norbert Basler founded the company in 1988 together with a fellow student and a starting capital of 2,000 D-Mark, the business idea was clear: an image processing company. Within a few years success was achieved, especially with systems for testing optical data carriers. 10 years later, the company began to develop its own cameras and market them worldwide from 1998 on. A year later Basler went public. With its new strategic focus on the camera business, Basler entered the new millennium and gradually withdrew from the systems business over the next few years. Basler strengthened sales in the Far East and built its own production facility in Singapore.
This strategy contributed significantly to the strong growth of the company: Camera production rose from 24,000 units in 2009 to more than 450,000 units in 2017. Through its consistent focus on the volume segments of the industrial camera market, Basler achieved annual revenue growth rates of more than 15 percent despite steadily decreasing average prices. In the record year of 2017, Basler even increased its sales by 54 percent over the previous year. This success is also reflected in the stock market: In 2017, the Basler share is the most successful share in northern Germany. The consistent growth is also the result of the company's high innovation performance and the resulting high attractiveness of the products it brings to the market.
