Stihl (company)
| Stihl Holding AG & Co. KG
|
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|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | Limited partnership |
| founding | 1926 |
| Seat | Waiblingen , Germany |
| management |
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| Number of employees | 16,899 (2019) |
| sales | 3.9 billion euros (2019) |
| Branch | mechanical engineering |
| Website | www.stihl.de |
| As of December 31, 2019 | |
Stihl ( spelling : STIHL ) is a German industrial company that is active in over 160 countries and has its headquarters in Waiblingen-Neustadt . The family company develops, manufactures and sells motorized equipment for forestry, gardening and landscaping and the construction industry. High-pressure cleaners are also sold under the Stihl brand. The company was founded in 1926 and has been the world's leading manufacturer of chainsaws since 1971 .
With Stihl Timbersports, the company organizes competitions for various forestry disciplines .
history
Andreas Stihl had after the First World War , a mechanical engineering degree completed in 1926 in Stuttgart , the A. Stihl engineering company established the first steam boiler produced -Vorfeueranlagen and washing machines. As a result, the company earned money to build a cross-cut chain saw with an electric motor that weighed 48 kilograms and had to be operated by two men.
In 1926, Stihl began producing gasoline-powered chainsaws. The Stihl type A tree felling machine was exported in large numbers to Russia , the USA and Canada . Confirmed by the successes, the technology was continuously improved in the following years. The number of employees grew to 250 by 1939. In 1938, a former paper mill in Neustadt an der Rems (which was incorporated into neighboring Waiblingen in 1975) was added as a second plant . In 1944 the factory in Bad Cannstatt was destroyed by a bomb attack. The entire production was then relocated to Neustadt.
Since after the war the demand for chainsaws could not exhaust the capacity of the factory in Neustadt, Andreas Stihl began in 1948 with attempts to produce a tractor. The result of this was the S 140 all-purpose tractor presented in 1949 . Its single-cylinder two-stroke engine was also supplied to other tractor manufacturers. From the mid-1950s, chainsaw sales increased significantly. As a result, this area took up more resources and gearboxes from Hurth were used from the end of the 1950s . The company's own motors were also gradually replaced by those from MWM. When the competition in the tractor market grew stronger in the 1960s, it was decided in 1963 that Stihl would discontinue tractor production in 1965.
The upswing after the war was brought about by the development of lighter and universally applicable one-man chain saws from the mid-1950s. One of the bestsellers was the Stihl Contra , which came onto the market in 1959. In 1961 the company had to charter cargo planes to meet the high demand in Canada and the USA.
By 1971, Stihl became the largest chainsaw manufacturer in the world. From the 1970s, production facilities were established in Germany and abroad ( Brazil , USA , Switzerland and Austria ), and an extensive global sales structure with its own subsidiaries and importers was also expanded.
After the death of the founder Andreas Stihl in 1973, Hans Peter Stihl took over his father's company. The following years were marked by constant growth and expansion. In 1969 the turnover was 113.8 million DM, ten years later it was already 556 million DM, in 1989 it was over 1.1 billion DM.
In 1987, for the first time, an employment and site security contract for the German headquarters was agreed with the general works council and has since been further developed and renewed several times. In December 2015, the new contract was signed with an employment guarantee until the end of 2020.
In the 1990s, the family members gradually withdrew from the operational business. In 1995, Stihl Holding AG & Co. KG was founded as the parent company of the companies Andreas Stihl in Waiblingen, Stihl KG in Dieburg and Stihl & Co. in Wil. Stihl AG was founded as the new general partner in 1997.
Since 2002, for the first time, a non-family board member has been managing the business of Stihl AG and thus that of the group. The former boss Hans Peter Stihl took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board of Stihl AG and the chairmanship of the advisory board of Stihl Holding AG & Co. KG. On May 3, 2010, the company announced that Hans Peter Stihl was resigning as chairman on June 30, 2012; since then he has been honorary chairman of both boards. His son Nikolas became his successor on the advisory board.
Investments
Since the turn of the millennium, Stihl has invested, among other things, in a new development center in Waiblingen-Neustadt, which opened in June 2004. With 40 million euros, the largest construction investment in the company's history was made. In September 2006, an assembly plant was opened in Qingdao (China), the production capacity of which was almost doubled in 2013 through an investment of 17 million euros. In addition, a new logistics building was inaugurated in Switzerland in 2013 and sales companies were founded in Colombia and Serbia and Montenegro.
Important new acquisitions were those of the Austrian garden tool manufacturer Viking in 1992 and that of the carburetor manufacturer Zama in 2008.
Since 1999, Stihl has submitted over 100 patents for registration every year.
Group overview
Current group structure
The group's scope of consolidation includes 32 sales and marketing companies of its own in Germany and abroad. The holding company is Stihl Holding AG & Co. KG, based in Waiblingen. Important subsidiaries are:
- Stihl AG (100%)
- Andreas Stihl AG & Co. KG, Waiblingen, headquarters of the company (100%)
- Stihl International GmbH, Waiblingen (100%)
- Stihl subsidiaries of STIHL International GmbH (100%)
- Zama subsidiaries of STIHL International GmbH (100%)
- Stihl Vertriebszentrale AG & Co. KG, Dieburg (100%)
- Stihl Kettenwerk GmbH & Co KG Waiblingen, Wil branch , Switzerland (100%)
Bertram Kandziora has been CEO of Stihl AG & Co. KG since July 2005 .
Key figures
| Stihl Holding key figures (consolidated companies - values in million euros) | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | |
| sales | 2,018.7 | 2,087.8 | 2,142.7 | 2,037.5 | 2,363.0 | 2,617.6 | 2,775.7 | 2,814.4 | 2,979.8 | 3,245.7 | 3,458.4 | 3,791.8 | 3,782.1 | 3,932.5 |
| Foreign share of sales | 87.9% | 88.3% | 88.7% | 88.0% | 89.3% | 89.4% | 90.1% | 89.9% | 89.4% | 90.1% | 89.7% | 89.8% | 89.5% | 89.9% |
| Employee | 9,449 | 9,779 | 11,484 | 10,883 | 11,310 | 12,026 | 12,338 | 13,844 | 14,279 | 14,245 | 14,920 | 15,875 | 17.122 | 16,722 |
| Investments | 164.2 | 170.9 | 190.1 | 130.7 | 122.7 | 183.6 | 227.4 | 202.5 | 181.9 | 234.7 | 209.3 | 248.3 | 324.4 | 308.2 |
| Total assets | 2,163.1 | 2,256.5 | 2,521.4 | 2,683.1 | 3,052.3 | 3,410.8 | 3,696.6 | 3,884.1 | 4,277.9 | 4,776.6 | 5,287.8 | 5,439.1 | 5,844.4 | 6,315.5 |
| Equity ratio | 58.1% | 61.0% | 60.4% | 65.3% | 66.7% | 68.2% | 68.5% | 68.4% | 70.0% | 69.7% | 70.5% | 70.2% | 69.9% | 70.4% |
Products
The best-known products are the power chain saws manufactured since the late 1920s.
- In 1950, Stihl introduced the world's first one-man petrol chain saw, the Stihl BL . Equipped with an adjustable swivel carburetor, the saw can be used for cutting to length and felling.
- The Stihl Contra made Andreas Stihl known in 1959 as the father of the chainsaw . Due to the low weight (12 kg) of this saw with an output of 6 HP, the motorization of forest work has finally established itself worldwide. In less than two years, more than 200,000 of these chain saws were produced. In the USA it was marketed as Contra-Lightning . It was built in four different versions from 1959 to 1967. It has a displacement of 106 cm³ and was mainly operated with sword lengths of 43, 53, 63, 80 cm.
- Since 2009, Stihl has also been bringing cordless tools onto the market; 2014 the world's first cordless cut-off machine .
- The Stihl MS500i will be launched in spring 2019. It is the world's first chainsaw with electronically controlled fuel injection.
- In the course of 2020 the Stihl MS400 CM will be introduced, it will be the first chainsaw with a magnesium piston.
Stihl built tractors from 1948 to 1963 .
Back in 1988, Stihl was the first company to develop a catalytic converter for 2-stroke engines. It reduces the emission of harmful hydrocarbons by 60 to 80%. To this day, Stihl installs such catalysts, also in machines for the hobby sector.
With the takeover of Viking GmbH, the product portfolio was expanded to include motorized garden tools such as lawn mowers, tillers and shredders.
distribution
Stihl machines are sold exclusively through specialist dealers. The B2B sales of the manufacturing plants to the specialist trade are not carried out directly, but via their own subsidiaries (in around 30 countries worldwide) or via independent importers.
- Products
Professional brushcutter or -Freischneider Stihl FS 350
Today's chair saw in use
MS 170. One of the smallest motor chain saws from Stihl
Power cutter
Stihl brushcutter, model FS74 from 1991 (left) and model FS80R from 2004 (right)
Stihl chainsaw MS 170 (front) and MS 290 Farm Boss
criticism
As the parent company of the Zama Group, which is registered in Hong Kong, Stihl is the owner of the Zama production plant in Shenzhen (China), which has repeatedly made headlines in recent years because of the strikes of the Chinese workforce. For example, in 2013 due to the excessively long employment of temporary workers and in June 2017 due to inadequate labor protection precautions (for example, no masks and protective gloves were provided for painting work). Both strikes were violently suppressed by the Chinese police (the strike is prohibited in China ).
In popular culture
- In the French horror film High Tension (2003), the murderer does not use a cliché chainsaw , but a cut- off machine from Stihl.
- The German rapper Thomas D posed at the anniversary concert Heimspiel - 20 years Die Fantastischen Vier on the Cannstatter Wasen during the song Schizophrenia with a chainsaw from Stihl.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Corporate structure of the STIHL Group
- ↑ a b STIHL Annual Report 2019. Annual Report. Stihl Holding AG & Co. KG, accessed on May 31, 2020 (PDF).
- ↑ STIHL guarantees employment until 2020 and is investing heavily in the German location . Stihl, press release, December 18, 2015, accessed April 15, 2018.
- ↑ spiegel.de of May 3, 2010, Hans Peter Stihl initiates a generation change , available on May 22, 2019.
- ↑ Stihl Press Archive 2013 , available on May 22, 2019.
- ↑ Stihl: Annual Report 2014 (PDF) ( Memento from November 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), p. 2.
- ↑ Stihl: Annual Report 2015
- ↑ Stihl: Annual Report 2018
- ↑ Stihl: Annual Report 2019
- ↑ New product segment at STIHL: Cordless hedge trimmers ( Memento from 23 August 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ STIHL brochure 90 Years, 1926–2016, page 6 ( Memento from September 21, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), (PDF)
- ↑ MS 500i - Innovative chainsaw with electronically controlled injection , stihl.de
- ↑ MS 400 CM - The first chainsaw with magnesium pistons, stihl.de
- ↑ Workers at unsafe jobs left with nothing after strike. July 18, 2017, accessed January 7, 2019 .
- ^ Labournet: Again a German company with Chinese police against strike: Not for the first time the Stihl company »LabourNet Germany. In: LabourNet Germany. July 24, 2017, accessed on January 7, 2019 (German).