In 1873, the pair of brothers Thomas and Christian Netzsch founded a factory in Selb/Germany which manufactured fire engines and agricultural equipment. The small workshop has become a world market leader in ball mills, ranking today among the leading addresses in the field of cocoa processing and chocolate production. The proximity to customers and practical innovations are one of the company’s secrets of success.
By Alfons Strohmaier
What started as a small workshop in Selb has emerged to become an internationally successful mechanical engineering group with 4,200 employees that is active today on every continent, and has meanwhile also become a top supplier in the cocoa processing and chocolate manufacture sector. A visit by sweets processing to the headquarters of the Grinding & Dispersing division in Selb gave an idea of what has made Erich Netzsch GmbH & Co. Holding KG a hidden champion in the various markets it serves. The Grinding & Dispersing division is complemented by Pumps & Systems and Analysis & Testing departments with which Netzsch is also involved in the chocolate industry.
One principle of this family-owned and operated company with worldwide production, sales and service segments runs throughout its 150-year history: maintaining close relations with customers, analysing markets precisely and being ahead of the curve in embarking on new paths. This is how the engineer Christian and the locksmith Thomas Netzsch created their first sales hit with fire engines from the factory “Gebrüder Netzsch Maschinenfabrik”. “Proven Excellence”, a focus on the very highest quality, was already a characteristic of the mechanical engineering firm back in the 19th century, along with flexibility.
As the local economy in and around Selb became dominated by the porcelain industry, beginning in 1890, the company began concentrating on the development and manufacture of specialized machinery for the ceramics industry. With constant further development and improvements over decades, Netzsch agitator bead mills established a high global reputation in submicron mixing and grinding. The agitator bead mills are available as laboratory machines, individual machines and as complex production facilities, and they remain the core element of the company Netzsch Feinmahltechnik GmbH, founded in 1974.
After the year 2000, a good nose for coming changes in the markets persuaded the management to view the chocolate industry as a new strategic field of activity, especially, as the porcelain industry went into crisis as a result of competition from China. At the 2008 interpack trade fair, Netzsch surprised attendees with its ChocoEasy system concept, offering primarily smaller operations at that time a flexible, user-friendly solution that saves space and energy.
After successfully entering the market, the Netzsch team defined its strategy as follows: developing a compact chocolate mass production system uniting the conventional processes such as mixing, preliminary grinding, refining and dry-and-liquid conching in a completely closed system with a high capacity factor. Thanks to great innovative talent and a focus on the highest quality, today, “Conching by Netzsch” and “Refining by Netzsch” are in demand around the world.
Systems that are regarded around the world as elite top-of-the-line solutions include the Tango compact system for manufacturing cocoa mass, featuring the MasterNibs beater blade mill for the preliminary grinding of cocoa nibs, the MasterRefiner agitator bead mill for fine grinding cocoa mass and the Rumba system concept with batch sizes ranging from 150 to 6,000 kg for the production of high-quality chocolate. The Salsa production line concept is yet another innovative, high-performance solution for compounds and filling masses. According to Christian Langkrär, Regional Business Field Director Food EMEA, Netzsch is a global market leader in wet grinding technology.
With the company’s process technology know-how and an extensive portfolio of laboratory and production machinery extending all the way up to complete production lines, there’s no getting around Netzsch in the cocoa and chocolate manufacture sector these days. Food technologist Christian Langkrär explains: “Today, we’re in touch with numerous chocolate manufacturers, large and small. Because of the enormous rise in energy costs, there is increasingly more attention now on energy-saving concepts, and we’re benefitting from that.In addition, the constant diversification by companies of their product ranges with limited editions and seasonal varieties requires much greater flexibility than previously.”
Matthias Kapp, Vice President of Food Business Field Food & Pharma, also sees maintaining a constant dialogue with food product manufacturers as indispensable: “We know the situation in the food industry inside-out, and this enables us to provide custom-fitted solutions and innovative advanced developments.” Early on, Netzsch built a WhiteLab at its Selb location to achieve the optimum with customers in this regard.
This is where new solutions are configured and tested for customers from all over the world. “This allows us to also offer contract grinding,” says Mr Kapp. The company strategy until 2026 assigns the confectionery and chocolate sector a correspondingly important role. While Netzsch may have been a niche player in the early days of the interpack trade fair, nowadays the company, run by Paul and Moritz Netzsch in the fifth generation, is one of the main attractions at this year’s leading specialist industry trade show in Düsseldorf/Germany.
The Netzsch group with its Grinding & Dispersing business unit will be represented at interpack again after six years. The company presents itself in hall 3, booth C72, as a full-range supplier and one of the leading suppliers in the field of cocoa processing and chocolate mass production, as well as in hall 16, booth F57, for process machines and systems for the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.
