A Brief History of Putzmeister

 ■1958 Karl’s first step

In 1958, Karl Schlecht started a company called KS-Maschinenbau in Aichtal near Stuttgart when he was 25 years old. Mr.Schlecht himself is a mechanic. Right after the first year of the company’s foundation, the very first mortar machine came into existence along with his master’s dissertation.

■1963 Birth of Putzmeister

In 1963, the name of KS-Maschinenbau was replaced by Putzmeister, which means “master of mortar” in German. Putzmeister has never left the concrete machinery industry ever since. Putzmeister’s ‘Elephant’ concrete pump gained its popularity in early 70s, and has gradually made the company one of the global leaders in terms of market share, geographic coverage, technology advance as well as product range in concrete pumping industry.

Putzmeister has enjoyed stable but moderate growth in half a century’s time as a result of niche market strategy. Compared to companies like Caterpillar, Putzmeister is still a medium-sized enterprise. In 2004, the consolidate revenues of PM Group is 750million USD with 2375 employees in total.

■1970 Setting foot in China

Putzmeister sold its first product in China through its hongkong-based distributor in 1970s. For a long time before middle 1990s, it was imported products, mainly those of Putzmeister and another German brand Schwing, that dominated Chinese concrete machinery market. However, there was not much demand on concrete pumps at that time because of the high prices.

The Germans had not established any subsidiaries in China until late 1995. Soon after that Putzmeister built its third factory in Songjiang District of Shanghai, showing its attention to the fast developing market of China. Ironically, it was exactly the time when Chinese concrete machinery manufacturers started to boom. Therefore, the market share of Putzmeister kept decreasing even though the sales grew in the next few years. Till 2004 and 2005, the market share of Putzmeister has fallen to 6% to 8%, focusing on high-end concrete pump trucks.

■1998 The foundation of Karl Schlecht Stiftungen (charity fund)

By the time when Putzmeister reached its 40 anniversaries, the founder Mr.Schlecht announced that he will step down from daily operation management. On top of that, Mr. Schlecht has donated his share to the charity fund named after him. Currently, about 99% of Putzmeister belongs to Karl Schlecht Stiftungen. Mrs. Schlecht owns the rest less than 1%.

■Low-profile Champion, grounded in innovation and improving

Putzmeister has long enjoyed a global market share of 40%, generating more than 90% of sales from outside Germany. Europe (excl. Germany) and North America contributed more than 75% of the sales in 2004. Putzmeister has, however, relatively weak performance in emerging market like Far East and Africa. . Till 2011, Putzmeister has more than 3000 employee around the globe with 570bn EUR annual sales revenue.

Over the past 50 years, Putzmeister has always maintained a typical low-profile champion market strategy featuring differentiated focus. It never sets foot in business other than mortar and concrete machinery and has always maintained the best technologies and products. Technologies such as closed hydraulic system and S-pipe distributing valve are all invented by Putzmeister. According to the survey on foreign brands in China construction machinery markets initiated by Construction Machinery and Maintenance Magazine, “the leading position of Putzmeister in concrete pumping industry is unshakeable. It is the choice of almost all the interviewees from concrete industry.” Even for its strong Chinese competitors like Sany and Zoomlion, Putzmeister is an unavoidable name in their corporate training materials.

The Putzmeister motto is Enjoy Serving - Improving – Creating values. No matter in corporate overview or introduction of the history on its official website, innovation in the field of concrete machinery and improving quality are always the emphasis. As for corporate development, Putzmeister seems to focus more on its position in the market segment instead of absolute size of the company.