HEAT PUMPS
From fl edgling to global leader
Bitzer celebrates 90 years at the heart of refrigeration
From small beginnings, Bitzer has grown to become one of the most successful and trusted compressor manufacturers in the world. Kevin Glass, MD of Bitzer UK, looks back on the company’s journey.
W
hen Martin Bitzer established a small refrigeration engineering company called Apparatebau für Kältetechnik (later to
become Bitzer) in 1934, few could have predicted the company’s remarkable growth and development over the decades that followed.
In the early days, the company manufactured simple mechanical expansion valves. This humble yet reliable system component was followed by a sequence of rapid developments, and it wasn’t long before the fi rst Bitzer open-drive compressor, known as the Type 1, rolled off the production line, closely followed by the fi rst shell and tube condensers and liquid receivers. Bitzer was now in business, making some of the
key system components required for rapid expansion of the modern cold chain needed by the burgeoning food industry.
In the decade following came the fi rst Bitzer hermetic and semi-hermetic compressors, ushering in a new era of improved energy effi ciency and refrigerant containment. It was huge leap forward from the ineffi cient open-drive compressors of the past.
As a result of such pioneering innovations, by 1959 Martin Bitzer had expanded the company to 206 employees and was exporting its highly regarded products to 56 countries.
Ownership of the company passed at the beginning of the Sixties to Ulrich Schaufl er, a graduate engineer with a passionate interest in refrigeration technology. It was an important development, and Ulrich Schaufl er sharpened the company’s focus on high quality production, and redoubled the emphasis on advancements in engineering and design. The result was rapid progress in compressor technology on multiple fronts. When Ulrich Schaufl er’s son Peter inherited the business in 1979, Bitzer had annual sales
20 December 2024 •
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of DM30 million. The handover to the creative and entrepreneurial Peter Schaufl er marked the beginning of a period of rapid commercial and technical transformation. Under Peter Schaufl er’s leadership, in the years that followed sales increased to E740 million and the company founded over 40 subsidiaries on fi ve continents. It established factories in Portugal, China, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia and the United States.
During this period a number of important engineering developments were introduced to the world. The fi rst model of Bitzer’s renowned twin-rotor screw compressor was launched in the early Eighties. Refi ned and perfected in subsequent iterations, this reliable, high effi ciency compressor rapidly became a trusted workhorse that remains part of the company’s core off ering today. Bitzer’s fi rst lightweight aluminium compressor
...few could have
predicted the company’s remarkable growth and development over the decades that followed.
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