VAG fittings

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VAG GmbH

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1872
Seat Mannheim , Germany
management Mogens Søholm Bennetsen, Robert A. Heiß, Ralf Scharre
Number of employees > 1,100
Branch Fittings manufacturer
Website www.vag-group.com
Status: 2020

The VAG GmbH (short VAG ) is a global manufacturer of water and sewer fittings . The VAG Group employs more than 1,100 people worldwide at 6 manufacturing and 14 sales locations. The company's headquarters are in Mannheim .

VAG has been part of AURELIUS Equity Opportunities SE & Co. KGaA since November 2018 .

activity

The company is active in eight different application areas, including water treatment , water distribution, wastewater , dams as well as the areas of pressure management, gas, industry and power plants. The product range includes gate valves , shut-off valves, control valves, ventilation valves , butterfly valves and house connection valves .

history

Factory site of Bopp & Reuther 1892 (today VAG GmbH)

In 1872, Carl Reuther and Carl Bopp founded the company Bopp & Reuther oHG, machine factory, iron and brass foundry for the production of fittings for water, gas, steam and the manufacture of pumps . The first workshop in Mannheim's Neckarstadt was built and equipped with machines from the Boehringer machine tool factory in Göppingen . The company grew and the factory in Neckarvorstadt became too small. Therefore, in 1897, a 165,000 m² site in the Waldhof district was acquired and a foundry was first built. This was followed by the relocation of the water fittings, steam fittings, pumps and finally the water meter department. In 1900 Bopp & Reuther supplied 60% of the world’s water gate valve production. Water supply systems for entire cities were built in the production halls in Mannheim-Waldhof. Eight years later, 3,500 people were already working in the Mannheim factory.

In 1925, Bopp & Reuther founded the company

  • AMAG-Hilpert-Pegnitzhütte AG Nuremberg (from 1947 KSB AMAG plant),
  • Guss- & Armaturenwerk KG, Kaiserslautern,
  • Klein, Schanzlin & Becker AG, Frankenthal (later KSB Aktiengesellschaft Frankenthal),
  • Maschinen & Armaturenfabrik vorm. H. Breuer & Co., Frankfurt / Höchst (later Breuer-Werke GmbH, from 1966 Buderus'sche Eisenwerke , Wetzlar),
  • Pörringer & Schindler, Zweibrücken (from 1991 P + S Armaturen) and
  • ALG Dehne, Halle (later VEB-MAW, Magdeburg)

a joint sales company, the "Vereinigte Armaturen Gesellschaft mbH" - VAG.

Export activities continued to rise. In 1927 VAG was the market leader in South America. The brass gate valve was developed in 1932. The idea of ​​a streamlined fitting with an integrated measuring device originally came from America and was further developed here. With this fitting, the pressure and volume of the water can be regulated cavitation-free and the volume flowing through can be measured at the same time. After several bomb attacks on the factory building on the Waldhof, the VAG office building (Rhein-Elektra building in the Augustaanlage) was also badly hit in 1943. All files and documents were burned. The employees were accommodated in the Bopp & Reuther factory buildings in order to continue business operations on a makeshift basis. As an important industrial city in Germany, Mannheim suffered particularly badly from the Allied bombing . A positive memorandum from the military government on the importance of valve production saved the plant from being dismantled in 1946. 2000 cubic meters of rubble were cleared and the destroyed workshops rebuilt. Production was back in full swing. When the Deutsche Mark was introduced in 1948, sales were again at 62% of sales before the start of the war.

In 1963 the 25th anniversary of the in-house training workshop was celebrated. In these 25 years, 1,800 apprentices were trained at Bopp & Reuther. As the first patented soft-seated valve with a fully rubberised wedge, the BETA®-valve was brought onto the market in 1968. In 1975 VAG celebrated its 50th anniversary. The contracts from the early days of the company were changed in 1949 to overcome the hurdle of the antitrust laws . Since then, VAG has been the company's agent. The eccentric flap standard program (EKN) was developed one year later. The technical and economic advantages of the new design revolutionized the use of fittings in water supply . At the end of the 1970s, district heating boomed in Germany thanks to the ZIP program (future investment program for cities) . Mannheim was one of the first cities to take part. VAG developed special fittings for temperatures of up to 200 ° C and accompanied the University of Stuttgart in its tests of the requirements. As a result, the district heating networks of many other cities such as Heidelberg , Cologne , Münster , Sofia , Malmö , Turin and Utrecht were equipped with valves from VAG.

The standard color of the fittings from Bopp & Reuther and VAG changed from red to blue in 1987. This went hand in hand with VAG's membership in the Gütegemeinschaft Heavy Corrosion Protection of Valves and Fittings through Powder Coating (GSK for short). This quality association was an amalgamation of the largest valve manufacturers in order to create uniformly high standards in drinking water supply and, if they are met, to award them the GSK seal of approval. In 1990 the company's shares were sold to Industriewerke Karlsruhe Augsburg AG (IWKA) . The new owner IWKA brought more companies into the group: IWKA Regulator und Kompensatoren GmbH and RMG Regel + Messtechnik. At the same time, the product divisions gas and water fittings (GW), safety and control fittings (SR), measurement and control technology (MR) became independent companies. Six years later, Bopp & Reuther acquired the majority of the shares in the largest Czech valve manufacturer JMA. VAG has been the sole sales company of Bopp & Reuther Armaturen GmbH since 1999.

In 2001 Bopp & Reuther Armaturen GmbH and VAG were finally merged to form VAG-Armaturen GmbH. In December 2004, “Equita Beteiligungs Fonds 2 KG” acquired 90% of the shares in the VAG Group from IWKA as part of the sale of the process technology division. The management of the company acquired 10% of the shares. In the same year a new plant for the Chinese market was opened at the Taicang location near Shanghai . On March 22, 2007 the first Visitor Center was opened in the headquarters of the VAG Group in Mannheim . It enables customers and visitors to see fittings and their functionality on 700 m² without having to appear at a direct installation location. At the beginning of 2008, Halder Beteiligungsberatung GmbH, together with VAG management, acquired VAG-Armaturen GmbH Mannheim as part of a management buyout . In addition, the “European Logistics Center” (ELC) was opened at the JMA site in Hodonín , Czech Republic .

In the following year, a new assembly plant in Hyderabad (India) and a second visitor center at the Taicang location were opened. In October 2011, the VAG Group was taken over by the American Rexnord Industries LLC. Rexnord Industries LLC, headquartered in Milwaukee , Wisconsin , has 6,300 employees worldwide and manufactures chains and fittings. Exactly one year later, the second new production facility was opened in Taicang.

With the takeover of the South African Klamflex Pipe Couplings (Pty) Ltd, VAG acquired its sixth production site on a total of four continents in the same year. On September 1, 2017, the name was changed to VAG GmbH. In November 2018, AURELIUS Equity Opportunities SE & Co. KGaA took over the VAG Group. The AURELIUS Group is a Europe-wide active investment group with offices in Munich, London, Stockholm and Madrid.

Products

The best-known products include the BETA gate valve , the EKN butterfly valve and the RIKO needle valve. The products produced by VAG can be grouped into the following categories:

application areas

VAG has specialized in the production and distribution in eight application areas:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.vag-group.com/Resources/Common/vag-group-ffekten.pdf
  2. ↑ a b Susanne Räuchle: Bopp & Reuther: The Rise and Fall of a company. In: Mannheimer Morgen. dated June 21, 2007.
  3. ↑ a b History of the VAG Group in detail , VAG GmbH website, accessed on June 12, 2014
  4. ↑ Members of the Gütegemeinschaft Schwerer Korrosionsschutz Website of the Gütegemeinschaft Schwerer Korrosionsschutz, accessed on June 12, 2014.
  5. ↑ Ad-hoc announcement sale of the VAG-Armaturen website of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ad-hoc-Publizität mbH, December 10, 2004, accessed on June 12, 2014.
  6. ↑ MBO at VAG-Armaturen Website of Halder Beteiligungsberatung GmbH, January 7, 2008, accessed on June 12, 2014. (PDF)
  7. ↑ a b Internationalization - compulsory or optional? In: Capital for Capacity. Issue 1/2013, Halder Beteiligungs GmbH, accessed on June 12, 2014 (PDF)
  8. ↑ Rexnord acquires VAG fittings. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine. dated July 25, 2011, accessed June 12, 2014.
  9. ^ Rexnord Introduction. ( Memento of June 5, 2014 on the Internet Archive ) Rexnord Corporation website, accessed June 12, 2014.
  10. ↑ https://aureliusinvest.de/equity-opportunities/presse/pressemitteilungen/aurelius-schliesst-uebernahme-des-fuehrenden-wasser-und-abwasserarmaturenherstellers-vag-ab/
  11. ↑ https://www.finanznachrichten.de/nachrichten-2018-11/45373268-aurelius-macht-den-sack-zu-617.htm
  12. ↑ https://aureliusinvest.de/equity-opportunities/ueber-uns/portrait-aurelius/

Coordinates: 49 ° 31 ′ 40.5 ″  N , 8 ° 29 ′ 3.8 ″  E