Durst Group named Wolfgang Knotz as Chief Technology Officer, promoting a long-serving internal leader to oversee the company’s technology direction. Knotz, who joined the company in 2013 after working at Siemens, began his Durst career as a production engineer in Lienz and has since played a central role in building the company’s development organization. In his new position, he also joins the Core Leadership Team, signaling the strategic importance of technology integration in Durst’s next phase.

Over the past decade, Knotz has been closely associated with the development of Durst’s Single-Pass and Multi-Pass printing systems, contributing to architectural decisions that continue to define the performance of the company’s platforms. His approach, described internally as system-focused rather than product-cycle driven, reflects a shift toward designing integrated environments where hardware, software, and workflow intelligence operate as a cohesive whole. That perspective is increasingly relevant as print providers look for scalable, future-ready production systems.

The appointment comes at a time when the printing industry is moving beyond standalone hardware toward more connected and intelligent production ecosystems. Durst indicated that Knotz will lead the physical and architectural foundation of these systems, aligning machine performance with the software and data layers that drive automation and efficiency. For Durst, the decision to elevate from within underscores both continuity in engineering leadership and a strategic emphasis on building differentiated technologies that are difficult to replicate.