Engineering passion and modern automation at the heart of Wrocław – a conversation with Maciej Włodarczyk, President of ZWA
How do you combine engineering passion with building a strong, modern business? We invite you to read the most essential highlights or listen to the full conversation between Dariusz Wieczorkowski and Maciej Włodarczyk, President of ZW Automation. This is the first episode of the new series “People of WPP”, produced by Dozamel Sp. z o.o. – the entity managing Wrocław Industrial Park (WPP). We talk about the journey we have taken since 2019 – from a return to our engineering roots, through the hard lessons of the early days, to choosing WPP as our base. It is a story about why, in the “price–quality–speed” triangle, we always choose quality at a competitive price, and how we build machines that drive Polish industry into the future.
Dariusz Wieczorkowski: Good morning. Today my guest, and yours, is Maciej Włodarczyk, President of ZW Automation. Good morning. This is one of the companies operating within Wrocław Industrial Park. At Dozamel, we are launching a series designed to showcase companies doing extraordinary things – companies that residents of Wrocław or other regions of Poland may not necessarily know about, yet have every reason to be proud of. What is ZW Automation?
Maciej Włodarczyk: ZW Automation is a company specialising in industrial automation in the broadest sense, currently focused more on industrial processes and machine building. We have been active on the market since 2019 and are growing, much like Dozamel. We offer clients a full scope of services: from design and engineering, through control panel fabrication (on-site at WPP), to complete wiring and project execution.
DW: Let us move from the general to the specific. Control panels, automation – how would you explain this to a layperson?
MW: I explain it like this: we all need clothing or heat in our homes, and these come from factories. Those factories operate using finished equipment. We are the technology partner for such a factory – for example, a combined heat and power plant. We design the system that says: “Listen, here is where the boiler will be, here is where temperature will be measured, here pressure, and here you need to feed in coal or gas.” We provide the technical capability for the plant to function.
DW: Who came up with this business?
MW: I did. The story goes that my colleagues and I used to work at a similar company many years ago, but our paths diverged. After a period of “drifting,” we thought we would go into sales – but you cannot fool an engineer’s nature. We decided to return to automation, but to do it our own way, with a focus on the highest quality.
I always talk about the triangle: price, quality, and speed – you can only choose two parameters at once. We focused on high quality at a competitive price. We of course also strive to take care of delivery speed.
DW: Is it a difficult business?
MW: It depends. In Poland, access to capital is difficult and costly. Having a company in Germany and a business idea, you can get millions of euros in credit almost effortlessly. In Poland, to obtain that kind of working capital facility, you have to put up your house and “half your liver.” At a small scale, it is a great, high-margin business compared to typical manufacturing, with a highly specialised engineering workforce. But when scaling up, challenges emerge: contract security, performance guarantees, and access to talent – finding two experts is one thing, finding twenty or thirty is another matter entirely.
DW: What was your hardest moment – the one that brought you back down to earth?
MW: You have to commit to a vision for the company’s growth. You can choose stability without problems, or you can choose the growth path where you reinvest everything – and we chose the latter. The hardest moment came at the beginning, with our first major contract for a German client, which we were self-financing. We completely depleted all our cash, including personal funds. I called my sister: “Listen, the holidays are coming – can you lend me five hundred for groceries, because I literally cannot afford food.”
We had issued an invoice due at the start of December, but the Germans announced they were on a break until January and would not be paying anyone. I thought it was the end of the company, that we would be liquidated. We managed to have a conversation, though, and they made an exception – the funds arrived on 24 December at 5:00 PM. From that moment on, I know that until money is in the account, it simply does not exist.
DW: Why did you choose Wrocław Industrial Park?
MW: We had a discussion about this. We believe that pushing manufacturing entirely out of cities is not a good idea. A mix of non-disruptive manufacturing and service operations alongside design offices like ours is better for the public space, because people do not have to commute long distances and can remain part of city life. Three years ago we were looking for a prestigious location that combined office space with a production hall – which is a major challenge on the market. Previously we were operating in poorer conditions, and when dealing with German clients planning projects worth millions of złoty, that looked weak and we needed the prestige.
Dozamel did a tremendous job – these buildings have history. We had a delegation from Berlin, architects and artists, who were enormously impressed by the restored and modernised halls. What has been done with these ruins is a chapeau bas to Dozamel.
DW: Where will ZW Automation be in 5 years? Will you launch into space?
MW: Perhaps not the company directly – but components produced on our machines may well end up going into space. As for our ambitions, I would like to maintain our current direction: steady growth, expanding the workforce, and stable financing. We are entirely tied to our economy – when it grows, we grow.
DW: A beautiful closing thought. Maciej Włodarczyk has been my guest and yours. Thank you very much.
MW: Thank you.