COMPANY PROFILE - BY PETER BRETT


STAHLWILLE’s technical expertise means they will always be Torque of the Town


STAHLWILLE is a traditional German company of the ‘mittelstand’ – the UK equivalent of a medium-sized business.


It is, and has been, a family business since it was founded by Eduard Wille in 1862 in Wuppertal. Today the management of the company is independent, but the advisory committee represents the Wille family.


Originally, the company was largely focused on making practical things in steel for domestic use - like fi re tongs and pokers. However, after 1900, when the motor car was in fairly rapid expansion and development, the company turned to making the spanners, wrenches and pliers needed to maintain the new technology.


In ‘The Kontor’, the recently renovated visitor and training centre (it used to be the main offi ce in Eduard Wille’s time), it is fascinating to see the display of the fi rst rather heavy duty spanners made.


This was then one of the most modern forges in Europe, and it was interesting to compare them with the slimmer and slicker ones made a hundred years later,


where the demands of mechanics on their tools are so much greater.


Eduard Wille established the maxim that the company was committed to producing the best possible tools with and for the customer.


The Wille family and company remain true to this maxim today – and in my view it is a much better long and medium-term business model than the exploitative venture capital approach.


STAHLWILLE has an excellent record of exporting products throughout the world. It has expertise in aerospace, automotive, renewable energies and industrial tools that puts it in a very strong position to compete with the biggest and best.


The Places and the People


The Cronenberg-Wuppertal site I visited was part of the original factory and forge started by Eduard Wille, and the large redbrick building that dominates the


entrance has recently been renovated and redeveloped into a light and modern training and showroom space.


What is missing is the small railway that used to run down the side of the building into the factory area behind.


As the factory is in the midst of what is now quite a developed urban area, the heavy-duty hammer forges have been moved to a more suitable site in former East Germany, and a more recent extension, built in the local vernacular of slate tiles, houses the administration.


Eduard Wille was passionate in his belief that people were the most important aspect of a progressive company, since it was they who had the ideas to develop and then make into desirable fi nished products.


Today the company employs more than 600 people and still manufactures in Germany. It exports to over 90 countries worldwide through a dedicated sales network that focuses on understanding the needs of the customers, and then supplying the correct and most effi cient solutions.


The Innovations


Chris Rose, UK Sales Manager at STAHLWILLE UK, which is based in Surrey, was a great guide, and showed me not only how the company identifi es issues and challenges that customers face, but also how the expert product development teams then try to develop solutions.


The obvious area to start is in the development of new ranges of torque wrenches for which STAHLWILLE is very well respected.


For me a torque wrench is a torque wrench, but it soon became clear that there is much more to developing an accurate tool, with a reliable and dependable mechanism that would withstand some rough handling.


Also, as torque wrenches are becoming increasingly important in aerospace and vehicle technology - where composite materials are very sensitive to pressure on the fi xings - it is vital to have a reliable tool that will ensure these materials can be used safely.


6


PETER visited the Stahlwille head office in Germany TBH September, 2018


I was introduced to simple mechanical torque wrenches that seemed to do the


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