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Mahle has bought a small manufacturer of controlled oil pumps for combustion engines based in eastern Germany.

Entec GmbH develops customised oil pumps and produces prototypes and small lots for special applications and motorsport. Mahle says that these brought in sales of about €7 million in 2007, and the company employs about 60 people at two locations in Thuringia.

Entec also licenses manufacturing of controlled pumps for larger orders to subcontractors.

Mahle says that controlled oil pumps will make a significant contribution to reductions in fuel consumption, since they can be precisely tuned to provide only the amount of oil that is needed at different engine operating points. Potential fuel savings through optimisation of the entire oil circuit system, using controlled oil pumps, could be up to 3 percent, it says.

Mahle says it plans, in the medium and long term, to exploit the growth potential for controlled oil pumps as part of an in-house manufacturing programme.

Prof Dr Heinz K Junker, group chairman, said: "Exploiting all of our development capacity and covering all fronts of the combustion engine, we are currently working on significant increases in efficiency and thus on the given potential of a significant reduction in fuel consumption and CO2.

"Controlled oil pumps can provide a significant conribution for the combustion engine to succeed on the long term in a strongly competitive situation against alternative drive concepts. We expect a significant increase in the usage of controlled oil transport pumps by 2015. Classical, uncontrolled pumps are replaced almost entirely by controlled oil pumps.

"With the acquisition of Entec, we are complementing the product portfolio of our Liquid Management Systems product line and expanding our product range by a significant CO2-relevant system component. We will also profit from our extensive production and process expertise for sintered components and aluminum processing, and are confident that we will soon gain significantly increasing market and sales shares."