As part of the global alliance WorldSkills International, one of the central tasks of WorldSkills Germany is to hold national professional competitions and to provide the best possible training for the winners for the “World Championships of Professions”. With this in mind, there are 20 state and federal performance centers for the different professional fields throughout Germany.
The new center in Wiesloch-Walldorf is the only one in Germany for the field of print media technology. With its extensive machinery, the Print Media Center offers the best training opportunities for ambitious young printers up to the cut-off age of 22. The national championships for the profession of print media technologist with eight competitors traditionally take place at Heidelberg, the next one is in October.
This year for the first time the German championships for digital and print media designers will also take place in Wiesloch-Walldorf. The winners qualify for the world championships held every two years and receive months of intensive training for this competition from Heidelberg in the new federal high-performance center in training camps lasting several days. One of the focuses here is digital printing.
“With this commitment, we are once again proving that we do a lot for the development of our industry and in this case for the promotion of young talent,” emphasizes Rainer Haus, Head of Human Resource Development at Heidelberg. The company also provides the equipment for the world championships held every two years. At the last competitions in 2017 in Abu Dhabi, around 1,300 participants from 78 countries spent four days competing in 60 different disciplines on the basis of project work. The next global competition will take place in 2019 in Kazan in Russia – the 45th event of its kind.
The title of “High Performance Center of Germany” was officially awarded on Wednesday, 11 April 2018, at a small ceremony as part of a Campus Day for vocational schools. The certificate of appointment was awarded by Hubert Romer, CEO of WorldSkills Germany. “Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG as our long-standing partner has more than fulfilled the requirements of a federal performance center,” he said.
