BREITNER
History of the company
in Schwäbisch Hall

The present begins…

In 2021, the company celebrates its 60th anniversary. In line with this jubilee, the new company building is inaugurated in June 2021.

Since the death of Hans-Joachim Breitner, the two brothers have been in charge of the company.

BREITNER celebrates its 50th anniversary

Almost 10 years later, Hans-Joachim Breitner’s two sons, Volker and Achim Breitner, were on board: Volker (on the right in the picture) took over sales, Achim (on the left) took over factory management.

The company grew continuously – the 1960s and 1970s were a time of economic upswing for the entire German industry.

And so the company headquarters on Daimlerstraße also experienced several expansions, manufacturing capacities were expanded and the production halls were generously equipped with modern manufacturing machines – the latter a passion of Hans-Joachim Breitner.

1979 was the year in which Hans-Joachim Breitner took over the helm completely and was appointed Managing Director. His father Hans now slowly withdrew from the operative business – after 18 years of intensive development work.

The expansion of production and assembly capacities shows how strongly the company expanded under Hans-Joachim Breitner’s leadership. Because after 13 more years, production was once again bursting at the seams.

Finally, premises of their own: In 1971, the new building was constructed, the company building on Daimlerstraße, where BREITNER will be located until the middle of 2021, half a century.

The next generation:
Hans Breitner’s son, Hans-Joachim, had studied mechanical engineering and after graduating had been able to gain important experience in another company outside his parents’ business.

He had already joined the family business in 1967 and had worked with his father ever since.

In 1966, the company at Mauerstraße 10 was bursting at the seams. And so “HANS BREITNER Füllmaschinen” moved into new, much larger premises at Auwiesenstraße 20 – 22. The house numbers already attest to the visible expansion of business operations.

The basic design of a linear filling machine, such as the mechanical piston filling machine with eight filling stations shown here, has proven itself to this day.

Hans Breitner was clearly successful in selling his filling machines as a packaging machine manufacturer. In order to be able to concentrate fully on mechanical engineering, he sold his electrical business in the same year, 1964.

In the same year, 1964, Hans Breitner exhibited his filling machine at Anuga.

The company’s presence at indrofa 1964, the international trade fair for chemists in Cologne, continues to have an impact on the company today in the fields of chemistry, cosmetics and pharmacy.

In the 1960s, such a business transfer was announced in the daily press in a formal manner – that was the style of the time.

The foundation stone for today’s company was laid by Hans Breitner, the grandfather of the current managing directors. On 1 January 1961, he founded the new company, turning his attention to the construction of filling machines.

He was undoubtedly inspired by the ideas of his father, Gottlob.

The economic basis for founding the company was an electrical shop in Schwäbisch Hall, which supplied the inhabitants with electrical products such as washing machines, fan heaters and electric hair clippers for ladies’ hairdressers.

Gottlob Breitner must have been an extremely creative man – in technical, entrepreneurial and verbal terms.

He invented and produced a hand- and foot-operated filling machine that met with much interest and great willingness to buy in small businesses, for example among pharmacists.

The operator controls the filling process via the pedal. This leaves his hands free to place the bottle under the filling tube. When the bottle is full, a flap closes the product outlet and prevents the operator from overflowing the bottle due to carelessness.

The brochure shows how the great-grandfather of today’s managing directors already put the benefit for the customer in the foreground: clean filling process, economical use of the filling product.

In the text, the brochure focuses on the variety of possible containers and products. Gottlob Breitner promises to respond individually and flexibly to customers’ special requests, e.g. regarding the container design.

From a marketing point of view, the name of the machine is “Unerreicht (Unrivalled) – we still take our hats off to this today.

Gottlob Breitner sold his now quite successful small company at the end of the 1920s.