OREANDA-NEWS. December 27, 2012. Dieter Tuppinger (53) has been appointed head of OMV Refinery Schwechat with effect from January 1, 2013. He will take over from Gerhard Wagner who is return-ing to Germany after almost five years at the helm. Tuppinger will be responsible for one of Europe's largest and most complex inland refineries with an annual ca-pacity of 9.6 million tonnes of crude oil and for the associated tank farms at Lobau, Graz, Lustenau and St. Valentin.

Dieter Tuppinger began his career with OMV at the Schwechat Refinery in 1991 following a period working as an university assistant in physics at the Vienna University of Technology and then at the University of Vienna. Having held a wide variety of positions in OMV's refinery business, the 53-year-old moved to Germany in 2007 to take up the post of production manager and deputy head of the Burghausen Refinery. In mid-2008, he was appointed managing director of OMV Deutschland and head of Burghausen Refinery. Tuppinger returned to Austria in 2011 to take charge of the international asset devel-opment function in the Refining & Petrochemicals business unit, part of the OMV Refining & Marketing division.

In his new job as head of the OMV Refinery Schwechat, Dieter Tuppinger will be responsi-ble for the continued optimization and successful development of the operation. "I am very much looking forward to this challenge. Our goal is to further improve the performance of this important OMV facility and to ensure that it remains an efficient and profitable opera-tion over the long term," he says.

The Schwechat Refinery is one of Europe’s biggest and most complex inland refineries. It supplies a significant percentage of Austria's demand for mineral oil products, thereby contributing to the country's security of supply. With over 600 employees, the refinery is an important employer in the region and provides valuable training places for skilled workers of the future.