Rapid Holding

Rapid Holding AG
legal form	Corporation
ISIN	CH0030333360
founding	1926
Seat	Dietikon , Switzerland
management	Rolf Schaffner ( CEO ) Philipp Buhofer ( Chairman of the Board )
Number of employees	130 (2016)
sales	38.5 million CHF (FY 2015)
Branch	Machine industry
Website	www.rapid.ch

Rapid SWISS

Motorized rotary hoe from 1939

Rapid microcar

The Rapid Holding AG based in Dietikon is in the engineering industry and in real estate operating Swiss companies. The group of companies, which consists of three subsidiaries, has 130 employees. Rapid Holding AG shares are traded over the counter.

Field of activity

The group of companies is divided into two business areas: Industry and Real Estate.

The Industry division includes the production and sale of Rapid single-axle devices , the import and trade of special vehicles for municipal technology and customer production for the machine industry. The real estate division consists of three real estate companies with properties in Dietikon, Killwangen, Fällanden, Urdorf and Bösingen.

history

The company was founded in Zurich in 1926 by Karl Welter and Arnold Rutishauser under the name Rapid Motormäh AG and brought the first mass-produced motor-driven bar mower onto the market.

From 1946 to 1947 Rapid produced a small series of 36 “Swiss Volkswagens” small cars. One of them is exhibited today in the Verkehrshaus in Lucerne . In 1947, the company moved production to the newly built factory in Dietikon.

In 1950 Rapid built the single-axle tractor type "S". The Rapid “Spezial” was a machine that could not only be used for mowing, but was also used as a transport device in agriculture in combination with a trailer driven by the PTO shaft . The “Spezial” combined with a wide variety of attachments was one of the first multifunctional devices and was built from 1950 to 1978. Another type was the Rapid 505 motor mower, which was produced over 30,000 times.

With the construction of a first series of 1000 lawnmowers , Rapid began its own lawnmower production in 1960. In 1961 Rapid moved into a new administration building and thus also relocated its headquarters to Dietikon.

In 1964, Rapid built the first self-propelled loading wagon and thus initiated a 30-year development history of two-axle transporters. In 1972 Rapid developed a mower-tractor based on a single-axle tractor that made progress in the rationalization of haymaking on slopes up to 65%. 1973 the tractor works Bührer was taken over. The production of mower tractors was stopped in 1992. Transporter production was given up earlier, from the mid-1980s Lindner bought transporters and sold them in Switzerland as Rapid Alltrac 2000 or 3000.

In 2003 the Rapid Group withdrew from trading in agricultural equipment. The remaining industrial area was then grouped into Rapid Technic AG, while the company's own real estate was brought into real estate subsidiaries.

From then on, Rapid Technic AG concentrated on the manufacture of single-axle implement carriers with hydrostatic gears and attachments. In 2018, it will be able to work on slopes of up to 50 degrees, the corresponding value 20 years earlier was 35 degrees. Municipal carrier vehicles are imported for the Swiss market and sold through specialist dealers. At the same time, the production of friction stir welded parts and the processing of complex cast parts were expanded for external customers .

In 2019 the German KommTek GmbH based in Osterburken was taken over. On July 1st of the same year Rapid acquired a majority stake in Brielmaier Motormäh GmbH .

Web links

Commons : Rapid Holding  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ NZZ, April 17, 2018, page 26
2. ↑ Rapid takes over German company. In: schweizerbauer.ch . April 26, 2019, accessed April 26, 2019 .