INSIGHT More than meets the eye


Bierbach Befestigungstechnik Unna


There are names one accepts as absolutely establishedmembers of the European fastener market, without really thinking about what lies behind them. For Phil Matten, Bierbach was one such. A recent visit to Unna presented the opportunity to talk with two generations of Bierbachmanagement and discover just howmuchmore there is thanmeets the eye.


T


he first thing is to recognise just how long the Bierbach family has been manufacturing, although not, it should be said, always


fastening technologies as we know them. ‘Bierbach’ was founded in 1855, in the small town of Altena, in the Sauerland region of Germany – around 40 kilometres south of the modern company’s current facility in Unna. The first production was, in fact, in needles for the sewing market. The business grew very rapidly and by the beginning of the twentieth century Bierbach had six production facilities – one of them, unsurprisingly on reflection, in Birmingham, UK.


after the war, who decided to turn the focus of the company toward nails – urgently required, of course, for the reconstruction of Germany and produced in a fundamentally similar way to the needles the business knew so well.” The company was small, no more


than thirty people, but the decision proved unquestionably the right one as it grew and would continue to do so well into the mid 1960s. By then Matthias’ father, Joachim Bierbach, had decided to give up his studies in economics in order to dedicate his time to a family business that had outgrown the expansion potential in Altena – a town constrained geographically by its position in a river valley. The company was moved to its current location in Unna, close to Dortmund. By the mid 1970s the Bierbach


Company employed some 50 people and was supplying nails to virtually every German hardware supplier to the professional end user – at that time every town had several such companies. “Now, of course, the market has markedly consolidated,” says Matthias Bierbach. The development of Bierbach’s now


A typically courteous welcome from


Matthias Bierbach “The family nourished by the company


also grew,” explains Matthias Bierbach, representative of the latest generation to join the management. “As a result the company was divided through the inheritance process and there were two different companies called Bierbach.” The Second World War proved both tragic for the family and pivotal for the business. “My grandfather went missing in action,” says Matthias Bierbach, “and my father was born during the war. With the company more or less without leadership my Grandmother, a music teacher with no direct commercial experience, took responsibility. She it was, immediately


extensive timber and construction connector business was the product of a combination of opportunism and an instinct for cooperation. An enquiry from Denmark for ring shank nails, which Joachim Bierbach could see as a volume growth product, led to a visit to a potential customer in Denmark. With it came the realisation that nails were required for the steel building connectors that were revolutionising the European wood structure market. A cooperative agreement saw Bierbach introduce a range of connectors. The market growth, though, was such that demand from Bierbach’s network of dealers outstripped the supplier’s capability at the time. “We had a technical manager who had previously worked in a pressings company,” says Matthias Bierbach, “who had the necessary knowledge to allow the company to invest in two or three simple, non-automatic presses and start producing its own connectors.” The venture succeeded, not least because of


50 Fastener + Fixing Magazine • Issue 67 January 2011


Bierbach’s market positioning and well- established relationships with the medium and small distributors, as opposed to the first tier distributors the main connector producers were supplying. The market trend towards connectors,


at that time, was driven primarily by the efficiency opportunities they presented to the builders. Today, the sector is tightly regulated with the most recent move to harmonised EU wide norms demanding even greater commitment and investment from manufacturers. Achievable for Bierbach because of the market wide reputation and volumes it has established, and the manufacturing capability it has


Hall: 8 Stand: S143


developed, but challenging indeed for smaller producers. Bierbach’s continued leading role


as a European nail manufacturer relies strongly on two key factors. The first is its range. “The nail market is not a homogenous one,” explains Matthias Bierbach. “On one hand are the common nails – these are not in the Bierbach line. We only have special nails – a complete program of 1,800 different types of nail on stock, probably the broadest range of any manufacturer, perhaps even worldwide”. That includes nails in iron, steel, aluminium, copper, brass and stainless steel. The message to the


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