A tradition of innovation

The his­to­ry of the Coburg com­pressed air spe­cial­ist, Kaeser Kom­pres­soren tru­ly is a remark­able sto­ry. Although many a com­pa­ny cel­e­brates its cen­te­nary, they can­not all boast such sus­tained and con­tin­u­ous­ly pos­i­tive devel­op­ment. A look behind the scenes.

Kaeser is active all over the world in its cen­te­nary year, 2019. How­ev­er, the gen­er­al pub­lic rarely comes face to face with the com­pressed air spe­cial­ist’s prod­ucts. Only the portable com­pres­sors catch the eye with their black and yel­low liv­ery and attrac­tive design, when used for road con­struc­tion work. Com­pressed air sta­tions tend to be hid­den away in out­build­ings. Yet Kaeser com­pres­sors are just as like­ly to be found in pow­er sta­tions in Aus­tralia as in Peru­vian gold mines, used by aero­space engi­neers in the US, fish farms in Nor­way, car man­u­fac­tur­ers in Ger­many, at the Cern par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tor in Switzer­land, on ski pistes in Aus­tria, on Ara­bi­an oil fields or the weav­ing mills in Asia. Com­pressed air is just as vital as elec­tric­i­ty. No com­pa­ny with an indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion line can get by with­out com­pressed air. Today, Kaeser has a glob­al pres­ence. Its cus­tomers range in size from crafts­man­’s estab­lish­ments to large-scale industry.

It all began in a small work­shop in Coburg’s Hah­n­weg. The old build­ings are still stand­ing in which Carl Kaeser senior start­ed pro­duc­ing spare parts and engines for cars, along with gear wheels and spe­cial machines for the glass indus­try, with a team of eight employ­ees and two appren­tices in June 1919. Busi­ness was boom­ing. With­in a few years, the com­pa­ny was to employ a 150-strong work­force. After World War II, vir­tu­al­ly the entire cus­tomer base fell by the way­side as most were locat­ed in Thuringia and Sax­ony – and thus on the oth­er side of the bor­der. Tak­ing advan­tage of the avail­able auto­mo­tive exper­tise, pro­duc­tion was adapt­ed with­out fur­ther ado to sim­i­lar prod­ucts: rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing com­pres­sors. Thus began Kae­ser’s suc­cess­ful focus on com­pressed air. In 1948, the first rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing com­pres­sor rolled off the Hah­n­weg pro­duc­tion line as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to evolve.

Fur­ther chal­lenges emerged dur­ing the mid-1960s. In ret­ro­spect, it may per­haps be described as the first tech­no­log­i­cal shift. Screw com­pres­sors came onto the mar­ket. Once again, Kaeser spear­head­ed the change with its very own inven­tion: Sig­ma Pro­file was born. Devel­oped in-house, it is a rotary screw airend with a spe­cial ener­gy-effi­cient rotor pro­file that was ground­break­ing at the time. Since then, Sig­ma Pro­file has been the cen­tre­piece of every Kaeser rotary screw com­pres­sor; need­less to say, it is also refined on an ongo­ing basis. Screw rotors are inter­con­nect­ed spi­rals with heli­cal lobes.

This inno­v­a­tive spir­it per­vades the com­pa­ny to this day, result­ing in a steady stream of inno­va­tions in com­pressed air tech­nol­o­gy and apply­ing equal­ly to hard­ware, soft­ware and ser­vices. From the refrig­er­a­tion dry­er to rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­trollers (Sig­ma Air Man­ag­er 4.0), from the portable com­pres­sor to com­plete­ly new busi­ness mod­els, where the cus­tomer basi­cal­ly only pur­chas­es the com­pressed air, through to dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and Indus­trie 4.0, Kaeser still blazes a trail in the indus­try for the cost-effec­tive, reli­able, effi­cient gen­er­a­tion and use of com­pressed air, thanks to its inno­v­a­tive, top-qual­i­ty prod­ucts and ser­vices. Most pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties are locat­ed in Ger­many, with sales and ser­vice avail­able in every cor­ner of the globe.

The com­pa­ny’s ear­ly inter­na­tion­al expan­sion was a vital aspect of its growth. The first branch opened in Switzer­land in 1978, with Aus­tria and France fol­low­ing hot on its heels. Today, Kaeser has more than 50 own sub­sidiaries and is rep­re­sent­ed by exclu­sive con­tract part­ners in over 100 coun­tries. Kaeser Kom­pres­soren employs in excess of 6000 staff world­wide, many of whom have been loy­al for decades.

How was this achieved? The com­pa­ny’s secret recipe is an unwa­ver­ing pas­sion for inno­va­tion, sound engi­neer­ing exper­tise, close cus­tomer con­tact and an aware­ness of their needs, com­bined with excep­tion­al qual­i­ty stan­dards, a good dose of com­mon sense and the main ingre­di­ents: excel­lent teams and strong fam­i­ly ties. How­ev­er, fam­i­ly does not just refer to the own­er fam­i­ly, Thomas Kaeser and Tina-Maria Vlan­tous­si-Kaeser, now the third gen­er­a­tion to man­age the com­pa­ny, while the fourth has also just come on board, in the form of their son Alexan­der Jan Kaeser. All staff are con­sid­ered fam­i­ly at Kaeser. This is evi­dent in the high appren­tice­ship rate, well above aver­age, and the extreme­ly long ser­vice record of the employ­ees, usu­al­ly more than 30 years. But it is also reflect­ed in the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness devel­op­ment: for 100 years with­out fail, the oper­at­ing result has been pos­i­tive. Even in 2009, the year of the glob­al cri­sis. From Anchor­age to Auck­land, Coburg or Kauai, Kaeser is a fam­i­ly-owned com­pa­ny with strong ties to Ger­many; it views the entire world as its home turf and offers ‘Made in Ger­many’ qual­i­ty from start to fin­ish. The next inno­v­a­tive chap­ter is just wait­ing to be written.