Hannover Messe: German Chancellor visit Rittal and Eplan

Chancellor Merz looked impressed as he visited the Eplan and Rittal exhibition stand. Prof. Friedhelm Loh, owner and CEO of the Friedhelm Loh Group, expressed his gratitude for the spotlight being shone on the industry’s innovative strength – at just the right time. For the current issues at hand are significant and pressing. Industrial companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, have made Germany economically strong.

What then? The formula for industrial success needs to be rewritten. The race for global market shares is fraught with challenges. During their tour of the trade fair, Rittal and Eplan presented to the Chancellor the technologies that can and must now propel the region’s economy forward: Industry is working on an AI-driven technological transformation involving industrial software and automation. AI applications are drastically increasing the demand for new data centres equipped with entirely new technology. Rittal already supplies 180,000 server racks per year to major cloud providers.

“I’m impressed by the technologies you already have in place here,” says Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “The federal government’s data centre strategy is ambitious. We want to double the capacity of data centres in Germany by 2030 and thereby become a global hub. Because we know that industry needs AI applications.”

“There are no guarantees of success. We have to work hard for it and set priorities accordingly – as a company and in politics,” said Prof. Loh: “We drive innovation because we love the future. And because, as a technology leader, we have a responsibility to further strengthen our customers’ competitiveness with the latest technologies. That is why we are also setting the pace for the construction of data centres,” said Prof. Loh.

20,000 laptops in a wall unit

Chief Technology Officer Philipp Guth explained a highly significant outcome of Rittal’s developments to the visiting politicians in person. The exhibit, which is finished in matt black and features shiny stainless steel tubes at its centre, is located in the middle of the spacious exhibition stand shared by Rittal and Eplan. It is as large as a wall unit. Or is it rather small-scale? The IT infrastructure for over 1 million watts of AI computing power is made up of a combination of water-based cooling technology, server racks and power distribution. The data centre module is surprisingly compact, given that it delivers the performance of around 20,000 conventional laptops. Up to 1,500 litres of water per minute flow directly through the servers. This is the only way to prevent this enormous amount of power from overheating in AI applications. In addition, the waste heat can be used for heating.

Enablers for AI

“Such infrastructure solutions are essential for industrial growth driven by AI and digitalisation,” explains Guth: “We need speed and other technologies to expand data centres.” Former niche technologies, such as direct water-cooling of chips and new power distribution architectures, must be implemented on a massive scale in new AI data centres worldwide, with a high degree of standardisation. In Europe, at best, as part of a European infrastructure that is independent and has its own supply chain and creates a lot of value, as the German government outlined in its data centre strategy in March. Manufacturing companies are ready, as Rittal makes clear.

The Hessian company, with its global production network, is not only a market leader in enclosure systems and cooling and a pioneer in AI for industrial software, but has also been supplying IT racks to almost all major cloud providers and server manufacturers worldwide for many years. Rittal developed the new coolant distribution unit itself. Rittal produces at its own factory, and base the supply chain and value creation in Europe – using technology that meets global data centre standards, which Rittal helps to develop as part of the international Open Compute Project (OCP).

“Standardisation is the key driver behind the necessary expansion of infrastructure. We follow the rules of the OCP and have designed everything to make sure it can be looked after in the same way as other data centres,” said Guth. The Chancellor and his entourage were able to see an example of this for themselves: the pump units are housed in slide-in equipment, much like servers, which can be easily removed for maintenance whilst the system is running.

A tour of the exhibition stand demonstrated how the innovations from this Hessian group of companies work together for the benefit of customers – through digital automation and AI in plant engineering using Eplan software, Rittal system technology, machinery, and smart cooling units that save up to 75 per cent in energy and are now future-proof thanks to the environmentally friendly refrigerant R-1234yf. Rittal extends its customers’ digital processes right into its own smart factory, which was named the overall winner of the “Factory of the Year 2025” benchmark competition.