Starting April 1, 2024, Carola Richter will serve as a Member of the Management Board of voestalpine AG and will become Head of the Group’s Metal Forming Division

The Metal Forming Division, with production sites in Europe, North and South America, China, and South Africa, and approximately 12,000 employees, is the voestalpine Group’s center of competence for highly refined sections, tubes and precision strip steel products as well as for ready-to-install system components made of pressed, stamped and roll-formed parts. This makes it one of the world’s leading suppliers in defined niches, such as the automotive industry with lightweight components, substructures for PV/solar systems in the energy industry, and solutions for the storage technology industry.

From April 1, 2024, Carola Richter, an internationally successful manager, will lead the division. 

“I am very much looking forward to preparing the Metal Forming Division, alongside its management team and employees, for the technological challenges of the future. The consistent focus on the customer segments crucial to us and the further decarbonization of our value chain will be two key areas of my work. I would like to thank you for the trust you have placed in me, and I am eagerly looking forward to my start in April,” Carola Richter emphasizes.

Carola Richter was last employed in management positions for the chemical company BASF for 20 years, including more than ten years outside Europe. She has acted at both strategic and operational levels and brings experience from various industries such as energy and mobility, but also from the consumer goods industry and the construction segment. During her tenure at BASF, her operational responsibilities included managing the pigments and additive business, as well as the global superabsorbents business. As part of her corporate role, she was responsible for the profitability evaluation of investments and the strategic optimization of BASF’s value chains. Since 2019, she served as the Regional President overseeing the Asia/Pacific growth region, based in Hong Kong, and most recently in Singapore. In addition to her operational responsibility for the local companies and production sites in the region, her work also focused on sustainability transformation, talent management, and strategic customer relations in the Asia region.

Richter studied at the Universities of Heidelberg and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), completing her studies with a PhD in the field of high-energy physics. She is married and will relocate from Singapore to Linz.

The Management Board of voestalpine AG also recently made a decision regarding the Head of the Automotive Components Business Unit within the Metal Forming Division and appointed Hubert Gach to the Divisional Management Board as of October 1, 2023. Gach (50) joined the voestalpine Group in 2019, where he was responsible for leading the Cold Stamping segment within the Automotive Components business unit, with around EUR 800 million in revenue and approximately 3,000 employees, based in Dettingen, Germany. Previously, he held various external management positions, including in the automotive supply industry.