Members of the Lions Club of Solothurn gathered at the Agathon AG offices on the evening of April 18th. These distinguished guests and their spouses, approximately 60 attendees, met for an social event with informative character. The company owners, Michael Merkle and Stephan Scholze, had invited the club members to observe advances in the high-tech industry and cutting-edge technology first hand. Merkle is not only the CEO of Agathon AG but also the current president of the Lions Club of Solothurn.
The occasion was marked by Agathon’s 100th-Anniversary event and was held in the nearly completed new customer center. In addition to the social gathering, the evening included a rousing keynote address by Dr. Konrad Wegener, Professor of Production Engineering and Machine Tools at the ETH Zurich and one of the most prominent experts worldwide in his field. Wegener explained the importance of the industry for the prosperity of Switzerland and delved deeply into the future of the machine tool and manufacturing industry. Wegener also heads the Institute for Machine Tools and Manufacturing, which provides technology transfer to the Swiss Manufacturing, Engineering and Machining industry. At the conclusion of Dr. Wegener’s commentary, Michael Merkle stepped to the podium and discussed how Agathon used the Swiss franc revaluation of January 2015 as an opportunity to realign the company.
After the formal addresses, the Lions went on a one-hour tour of Agathon’s mechanical manufacturing, assembly, and application technology laboratories. During the tour, they learned how this corporate realignment manifested itself in practice. The evening culminated with a cocktail buffet served in the customer center. The Solothurn architect, Guido Kummer, designer of the customer center for Agathon, received very high praise for his work during the evening. Also, the topic of much discussion, was the commissioned work of the renowned Solothurn artist Roland Flück, an impressive oil painting of the iconic Agathon building.
The Lions Association was founded in 1917, one year before Agathon. Today, it consists of around one and a half million members, who organize themselves in almost 50,000 individual clubs. These clubs are spread all over the globe. With their official motto, “We serve,” Lions commit to serving the common good. The money raised during that evening will go to charitable causes in Solothurn. Merkle emphasized that giving back is both satisfying and rewarding, “We as Agathon serve not only our customers but society as well. Perhaps, this is the reason why we are number one in our market and celebrating our 100th anniversary in 2018.“
