A big name in the Amazone Group: Vogel & Noot
The company Vogel & Noot based in Wartberg (Austria) used to be one of the big names in agricultural engineering. Founded in 1872 by Wilhelm Vogel and his partner Hugo von Noot, the company initially manufactured spades, shovels and plough shares, and later a steel plough body.
The company flourished and was already employing 800 people by the time the First World War started. Vogel & Noot manufactured the first complete ploughs from 1922 onwards and also heating radiators from 1929. The company still manufactures heating technology today, but with a different owner. For many years, ploughs were the main product manufactured by Vogel & Noot. Diversification of the product range did not begin until 1950, first with a motor mower and then with single-axle tractors, joined by green fodder harvesting technology in 1960. The plough always remained the most important product, however. The successful "Euromat" trailed reversible plough was launched onto the market in 1979 and was later joined by the "Eurokombi" seedbed combination.
At the peak of the business, Vogel & Noot built a completely new plant in Mosonmagyaróvár, Hungary and was the second largest manufacturer in the world in 1994 with an annual production volume of 4,300 ploughs. After Vogel & Noot also took over the company Niemeyer at the end of the 1990s, the business ran into economic difficulties. The Vogel & Noot Group was then divided into the three divisions, namely heating technology, automotive and agricultural machinery, and each division was sold off separately.
In 2001, Dieter Mengele purchased the agricultural machinery business and developed the product range into a complete portfolio before selling it to a Russian mechanical engineering group in 2009. The group operated successfully for a time and purchased other companies, such as Reform-Werke in Wels, which manufactured drilling technology. In addition to ploughs, the product range also included cultivators, seed drills and crop protection sprayers (manufactured by Holder). At the start of August 2016, the parent company in Wartberg, Austria, filed for bankruptcy.
The AMAZONE Group then seized the opportunity to purchase the non-insolvent subsidiary together with the plough factory in Mosonmagyaróvár. Now things are looking up again and everyone involved is happy that the once famous Vogel & Noot business could be saved along with many jobs. Amazone ploughs manufactured in Mosonmagyaróvár are testament to the fact that the comprehensive know-how required in plough production still lives on today.