It is always a great pleasure! With Norman and Tjark, 2 more light aircraft builders are continuing the long line of light aircraft builders who have been successfully trained in our company over the last 30 years. As part of a small celebration, the management, together with Boris as one of the two people responsible for training the light aircraft technicians, took the opportunity to congratulate them on their excellent results in their final examinations.
We are particularly pleased that Norman and Tjark have decided to remain loyal to us as specialists and to continue the exciting journey together in the further development of the MD Group with its companies MD Flugzeugbau, MD Composites and our youngest baby MD Aircraft.

The result makes us all proud, because in addition to the motivation and willingness of the trainees themselves, it takes the right environment to allow them to experience the challenges of this great profession, to convey all the learning content and, above all, to ensure that the necessary problem-solving skills are learnt.

Together we have succeeded in all of this. Once again, our congratulations and best wishes to Tjark and Norman, and many thanks to the team of instructors and everyone else who, alongside Boris and Alexander, contributed to achieving such a great result.

Balancing work and family life....
... we were recently invited to take part in a lecture event with young students to discuss the challenges of setting up a business and developing it into a successfully operating organisation.
It was fun to pass on our experiences and talk about opportunities, risks and good and bad decisions in this context.
In this context, the question of what contribution the compatibility of work and family can make to the success of a company was not surprising.
In our opinion, it is a real asset for every company to create the conditions and specific offers for this: After all, workforces are becoming increasingly diverse and so the needs of individual employees are also very different, especially when it comes to balancing work and family life.
In our companies M&D Flugzeugbau GmbH & Co. KG and M&D Composite Technology GmbH, these conditions and programmes are in place
✅ Hybrid working according to desire and need and not according to quota
✅ Possibility to also work flexibly in production
✅ Free emergency childcare if your own childcare is unavailable at short notice
✅ Permission and possibility to bring children into the company
✅ Our wage and salary model, supplemented by a qualification matrix, forms the basis of our promotion policy, which gives equal consideration to all genders
If there are any other good solutions, I would love to hear about them and look forward to your feedback in the comments!
Greetings GMU

Focus on sustainable product innovations

MP Julian Pahlke and Nicole Henkel, the Green Party candidate for the state parliament in constituency 87, have now visited the Friedeburg-based M&D Group with its M&D Composite and M&D Aircraft Construction divisions.

Managing Directors Tim Markwald and Gregor Müller provided information about the possibilities for reducing CO² emissions through the use of lightweight composite materials, for example in the areas of energy generation, mobility by road, rail and air, and in agriculture.

‘Lightweight construction is a key technology for saving resources and energy,’ said Markwald.
energy,’ said Markwald. Since 1995, his company has continuously expanded its expertise in the processing of glass fibre (GRP) and carbon fibre composites (CFRP). ‘Our expertise in aircraft construction is also the basis for our current industrial applications in many sectors,’ said Markwald. Lightweight construction, precise shaping, stability and efficiency are particularly important in gliding. ‘We can transfer this to many other applications’.

In addition to GRP and CFRP, bio-based raw materials will also be used in the future. ‘We are currently developing materials made from flax and hemp, which we can also give solid forms using bio-based resins,’ said Müller. These raw materials could also be grown by farmers in the region.

Specific development projects and products that the visitors learnt about during the factory tour included a lightweight vehicle frame for agricultural machinery, corrosion-free components for hydroelectric power plants, parts for wind turbines, a small wind turbine and the planning approach for an electrically powered short-haul aircraft.

‘We are also making our own production increasingly sustainable,’ said Müller. Following measures to save energy, for example by optimising the compressed air systems or switching to LED lighting, the next step is to generate energy independently using photovoltaics and, if possible, a hydrogen storage solution. ‘We can then also use the hydrogen to heat the paint shop, which is currently still fuelled by natural gas,’ says Müller. ‘Our goal is to achieve completely CO²-neutral production here at the site by 2026,’ added Markwald.

‘There is a lot of potential for innovation in medium-sized companies like ours,’ says Markwald. However, these companies cannot realise larger development projects from their cash flow. ‘That's why we expressly welcome the existing state funding programmes for technical innovation projects,’ says Markwald. In many cases, however, decisions take too long. ‘This can lead to decisive competitive disadvantages.’

Julian Pahlke, a member of the German parliament from Leer, was impressed by the tour of the company: ‘Many of M&D's approaches are technologically and politically promising and, in my opinion, worthy of funding’. Pahlke pledged to support innovative companies like M+D in Berlin. This also includes speeding up bureaucratic decision-making processes, he said.

‘Many of the projects on show fit in perfectly with the times,’ said Nicole Henkel. The M&D portfolio demonstrates a broad range of expertise in the region. ‘We have seen exemplary sustainability projects here,’ said the state parliament candidate.

(from left) MdB Julian Pahlke and state parliament candidate Nicole Henkel visited M&D managing directors Gregor Müller and Tim Markwald to find out more about small wind turbines like the one in the foreground.

M&D Flugzeugbau also integrates so-called homecoming aids into gliders - in this case a battery-electric propeller drive. In the picture (from left): M&D Managing Director Tim Markwald, state parliament candidate Nicole Henkel and MdB Julian Pahlke.

Your contact person

M&D Flugzeugbau
Tim Markwald
phone: 04465 978780
mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Oops! We've done it again!

We are training! Averted the academic drift?

5 young people are starting their dual training programme at the M&D Group this year. A good decision. All training places for 2022 have therefore been filled again from this training year. We even decided to fill an additional apprenticeship position at short notice and seize the opportunity. Our training quota is now 15.7%. We are very proud and satisfied!

But can we use this as proof that we can avert academic drift? Not at all!

A nice snapshot, but nothing more!

We are certainly an attractive and efficient training company for young people and obviously differentiate ourselves from others in key aspects from the trainees' point of view, but this alone will not be enough to secure the future of our company.

Our clear commitment to dual vocational training is not just a statement of our acceptance of an existential socio-political task and responsibility. It is also an expression of our deepest conviction that dual training must remain a supporting pillar to ensure the urgently needed value creation not only in the skilled trades but also in industry.

But that is not enough! In the same way, the will of politicians, whether at federal, state or municipal level, to strengthen dual training and to do everything possible to achieve this, needs to be realised.

At the latest when it hits the administrative level, it loses its political will and momentum, because the laws and framework conditions for implementation are usually simply lacking.

From this year onwards, our light aircraft mechanics will have to travel across the country to Donauwörth in the south for their theoretical training because the vocational training centre in the north, which has been used successfully for decades, no longer permits joint training with aircraft mechanics.

Unlike in other federal states, the full costs of theoretical training are not covered in the federal state of Lower Saxony. As a company, we are now the service provider instead! For almost two years, a corresponding motion for the full assumption of costs from the FDP parliamentary group has been ping-ponging between the committee and parliament. It has not even made it to the administrative level yet.

In order to strengthen dual training and maintain vocational school locations as desired and as can be read in almost all election programmes, a new way of thinking and the ability to respond spontaneously and individually with solutions on site is absolutely necessary. It is the self-imposed framework conditions that simply prevent new, pragmatic and viable solutions.

The quality of training in the company on the one hand and in vocational schools on the other does not suffer as a result of the fact that a small proportion of the framework curriculum cannot be taught or can only be taught with great difficulty. Ultimately, we train skills, we promote creativity, the ability to transfer and, above all, to think in terms of solutions.

What is needed here is the flexibility to think in guard rails and not in narrow lanes. This new way of thinking would also help to maintain vocational school locations and increase the attractiveness of individual professions.

As M&D, we would also like to train painters in addition to light aircraft builders, warehouse and logistics specialists and industrial clerks. Anyone who is able to master the technology of surface preparation and painting of gliders will later be able to fulfil the tasks of a painter in other places with different process technology.

We cannot imagine today how long it will take to implement this new way of thinking in dual vocational training.

Dear politicians, don't just express your political will in a mantra-like manner, but ensure the ability to act and the possibility for change and new thinking at the administrative levels.