The Hansgrohe company from Schiltach in the Black Forest has been shaping the aesthetics of bathroom mixers and showers for well over 100 years. The former craftsman's business from 1901 has now become a medium-sized global player and is growing at breathtaking rates. One of the secrets of its success is its broad expertise in surface coating and attention to detail.
It conveys a feeling of well-being when a fresh shower under immaculate fittings and shower applications cleanses body and soul after a sauna session. Or when, after dinner in a high-class restaurant, exclusive fittings on elegant washbasins with towels at the ready provide water and round off a successful evening to the sound of soft background music.
Bathroom culture at Hansgrohe
Living environments like these are created at Hansgrohe in Schiltach. Under its two brands Axor and hansgrohe, the 5400-employee company consciously combines passion, individuality and excellence with a wide range of bathroom and kitchen fittings and showers. Renowned designers work for the company from the Black Forest and create their bathroom collections for the brands. At the same time, the so-called Aquademie at the company headquarters in Schiltach advertises the Showerworld and individual bathroom landscapes - the company's own museum even still features the orange Seventies look with a shower experience behind glass blocks. The company keeps a close eye on the market: Trend scouts track down developments that the 195-strong research and development team and 50 designers turn into innovative products. There is now even a shower head for dogs.
Passionate about their job: Alexander Kuderer and Thorsten Pohl (from left to right)
Attaching fitting components in the brass electroplating area
In the surface technology area at Hansgrohe, tens of thousands of parts have to be moved from one production step to the next every day - an organizational masterpiece
The so-called Highriser is processed in a robot cell. You can also wash your hair under the long-necked mixer variant
The strategy of emotionalization is working: Turnover at Hansgrohe grew by a fabulous 27% to 1.365 billion euros last year. As an internationally positioned company with a foreign sales share of 74% and plants in Germany, France, the USA and China, the "Made by Hansgrohe" understanding of quality applies to all production sites around the globe, from Schiltach to Shanghai. There are also numerous awards: Top Employer 2021, Top 100 Innovator of German SMEs and 700 design awards.
Surface as a guarantee of success
But behind Hansgrohe's bathroom dreams and successes are innovative ideas, a motivated team and professionally executed industrial processes, particularly in electroplating and surface technology. "We also define ourselves through our surfaces," reveals Thorsten Pohl, Head of International Surface Technology at Hansgrohe. In Schiltach alone, 150 employees are dedicated to the diverse work steps involved in the surface technology of the products. Pohl is a thoroughbred electroplater. He started out as a surface coater at a fittings manufacturer in Sauerland. He then became a master electroplater and increasingly shifted the focus of his work to the commercial sector. In the mid-1990s, he moved from the west to the south of Germany, where Pohl finally made a new career start at Hansgrohe in Schiltach's Kinzigtal in 2005.
Alexander Klause, has a very high status in Schiltach
The Axor Manufaktur team is also part of Alexander Kuderer's organizational unit
Open sesame: The PVD chambers are constantly in operation because the demand for PVD coating is high and its use is expensive
10,000 faucet and shower variants
The range of colors and surface finishes of the faucets in Schiltach is impressive. There are up to 10,000 different variants of taps and showers. 17 color coatings - from silver to gold and bronze tones to matt black surfaces - are available. "Brushed black in an anthracite shade is very popular. However, gold finishes are also doing very well, while bronze is particularly popular in the PVD range," says Alexander Kuderer, Head of Axor Product Planning, who oversees the manufacture of Axor fittings from the drawing board to the finished product at the West production plant in Schiltach.
Two processes dominate the surface design: electroplating and the physical vapour deposition (PVD) process, which is used to create 15 of the 17 colored surfaces. The electroplated surfaces are limited to gloss and matt chrome. And PVD-coated or not: chrome is always the basis of a fitting from Schiltach.
Automatic chrome plating
The handle of this fitting consists of a solid, dark Swarovski stoneThorstenPohl is a giant of a man. With sweeping gestures, he leads us through the production halls, past the brass foundry, where the raw parts for the fittings are produced in low-pressure casting. This is followed by other upstream areas such as machining, where openings and threads are made, as well as the grinding and polishing shop. The background noise is characterized by humming machines and grinding sounds. In a robot cell, a sheet metal colleague is polishing and grinding a so-called "Highriser", a fitting variant with a particularly high base body and long spout. The customer can easily wash their hair underneath it at the washbasin. Finally, the brass electroplating is reached, which is secured by a high partition. Electroplating is fully automated here - racks enter and leave the plant around the clock on transport trolleys. Last year, a total of 15.2 million parts were electroplated in this way. "We still coat with chromium trioxide here, for which we have a 12-year special permit - both for pickling plastics and for the final coating," explains Pohl. However, the days of chromium VI are numbered: Hansgrohe wants to switch to chromium III before the special permit expires - if only because the company is committed to a sustainable production method characterized by savings, recycling and environmental protection, as Pohl explains. For the time being, however, conventional chrome plating will continue to be used here and substances that are harmful to health will be automatically dosed in order to protect the surface coaters.
The process that takes place behind the separators is clearly regulated: After an extensive pre-cleaning stage with degreasing and rinsing stages, which removes different types of dirt, different nickel coatings follow as the basis for the final chrome layer. Depending on requirements, high-gloss nickel can also be used for high-gloss chrome. Finally, the fitting component is coated in the chrome electrolyte. The nickel layer is 15 to 25 µm thick and the chrome layer is 0.3 to 0.6 µm thick.
Expanding the product range with PVD coating
According to Pohl and Kuderer, another important secret to the company's success in recent years is its increasing focus on PVD coating and special surfaces such as lacquer. This surface technology, which uses electricity to vaporize various gases over metallic targets in a plasma in the high vacuum of a chamber, thereby depositing metal on the component, actually comes from the technical sector. Since 2010, Hansgrohe has also been increasingly presenting products with PVD-coated surfaces. With success: the process, which offers significantly more scratch and wear resistance for components and further options for color design, has been increasingly used. As a result, the number of products with PVD surfaces now accounts for a growing proportion of the product range.
In front of the sealed-off area of the PVD coating chambers, a display above the door shows general data about the process and the use of the chambers. Doors as thick as safe hatches block the vacuum chambers, all of which are currently in use. "We work in three shifts here. PVD chambers are very capital-intensive, both in terms of investment and operating and maintenance costs," says Pohl, describing the relevant business aspects of PVD coating. "Economic efficiency requires the systems to be operated around the clock," he adds. There are plenty of possible applications: the chambers are currently even being coated on Saturdays in order to meet the high volume of orders. Then one of the chambers, which is tightly packed with tightly hung racks, opens up after all. Numerous small and medium-sized components emerge. As soon as the chamber is unloaded, the loading process begins again.
Where fittings are given a princely shine
The last stop at the western plant is Axor Manufaktur. Under the management of Thomas Wienen, nine employees create exclusive product variants for hotels, cruise ships and even exclusive private homes. A profitable business - even in economically uncertain times like now, as the high order backlog shows. In the past, prestigious projects such as parts of the outfitting of the luxury liner "Queen Elizabeth 2" or the luxury hotel "Burj al Arab" in Dubai were managed here with bathroom fittings. "When a custom-made product from one of our collections comes in, the technical feasibility is first checked and then accompanied by a project team from the first prototype through to the release of the individual parts and the start of series production," says project manager Lara Burger, explaining the process. One of the current prestige projects was the individual fittings in the eight Shamballa suites of the luxury hotel Villa Copenhagen in the Danish capital. The Axor Montreux mixer is used there. Its four-part handle is individually designed and set with sapphires and rubies. "The manufactory with its special services is a door opener for winning over projects like this, because the hotel owners expect very exclusive products for their suites," says Alexander Kuderer. He also draws attention to another shiny silver fitting that is operated by a handle made of a giant Swarovski stone. However, the Axor brand is not just for the absolute top end of the market. In middle age, some end consumers invest once again in a new guest bathroom with Axor products and customized surfaces. "The guest bathroom is more or less the host's figurehead," observes the Axor product planning manager, who initially trained as an industrial mechanic and got to know the work at Hansgrohe during his subsequent training as a mechanical engineer.
The Hansgrohe plant in Schiltach is located in the idyllic but narrow Kinzig valley
Faucet and shower fleet is converted
The supply problems caused by the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the pandemic do not scare Thorsten Pohl when he thinks about the supply of raw materials at Hansgrohe. This is because the company from the Black Forest tackled the issue of the supply chain at an early stage and has increased its stocks of raw materials. Chemical suppliers for the electrolytes also have the required quantities available for the Schiltach-based company. Growth can therefore continue. For this reason, 12 million euros are currently being invested in the modernization of the production site in Schiltach. The new Axor Center for Excellence will thus become a competence center for the production of high-end fittings. Another challenge is the trend towards sustainability, which is continuing to save water and energy. "We are in the process of completely converting our mixer and shower fleet to EcoSmart technology, which allows only around 9 liters of water to flow through the shower per minute. Showers that use more than 30 liters per minute will no longer exist in the future," Thorsten Pohl is certain. Hansgrohe is convinced that the addition of air and sophisticated in-house spray research will ensure shower comfort even with a lower water flow rate. In this way, all water-bearing products will be available exclusively with water-saving technologies by 2030. Pohl and Kuderer are already looking ahead with great passion for the world of mixers - the next ISH sanitary trade fair in Frankfurt is coming up in March 2023, where they want to present plenty of new developments with flawless surfaces.
