ETG surpasses 8000 members with Norwalt Automation integration

By Staff Report February 3, 2025 7:18 pm IST

The EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) reached 8000 members with the addition of Norwalt Automation Group. The group aims to provide the advantages of EtherCAT technology to its customers in the future.

At the end of 2024, the EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) reached another milestone in its membership development and now counts 8000 members with the addition of U.S.-based Norwalt Automation Group.

Norwalt joins the ETG as another leading machine builder that wants to provide the numerous advantages of EtherCAT technology to its customers in the future. Like the ETG itself, Kyle Seitel, Technical Operations Manager at Norwalt, said, “Without EtherCAT, the new machine would not be nearly as successful: the performance and synchronisation precision of EtherCAT enable the outstanding accuracy and high throughput of this system with its many axes. In this way, EtherCAT helps us meet the high expectations of our customers and continues to do so in the future.”

The EtherCAT Technology Group continues to expand its position as the largest fieldbus user organisation in the world. Hitting this 8000-member milestone, in combination with the approximately 80 million EtherCAT nodes in the field, once again confirms the success and market penetration of the technology.

The continuous membership growth of the EtherCAT Technology Group continues unabated more than 20 years after its foundation, with over 400 new members joining every year for the past 10 years. And although EtherCAT originated in Germany, the structure of the ETG is absolutely global: case in point, the number of Asian member companies has overtaken those from Europe. This means that 43% of members come from Asia, 42% from Europe, 14% from America, and 1% from the rest of the world. According to the organisation’s guidelines, only legal entities such as companies or universities can become members of the ETG, not individuals.