A LONG TRADITION OF INNOVATORS AND PIONEERS
Our company history
1901 – 1902: Anything but smoke and mirrors:
The birth of a fantastic idea
Our company’s success story starts with a great idea in a field that, at first glance, has nothing to do with the metal industry. At one time it was customary to smoke during the honey harvest as a means of protection against bee stings. The beekeeping enthusiast and professional clockmaker Josef König dared to break with this tradition as a non-smoker and adopted a completely new approach to safe honey harvests. He invented the “volcano” – a device driven by a clockwork mechanism that generates its own smoke and one that is known to most beekeepers to this day. Josef König founded the company on the basis of this idea in 1901; to this day it bears his name and enjoys a global reputation: KÖNIG METALL.
1920s – 1980s: Transformation and growth:
Our family company gathers speed
The automotive industry was prominent in the Murg Valley stark at the start of the 1920s. KÖNIG METALL spent this time concentrating on metalworking and supplying the commercial vehicle industry that was flourishing there. Furthermore, numerous restructuring measures as well as the arrival of Dr Otmar Zwiebelhofer, the nephew of the company’s founder, facilitated the metal goods factory’s continuous growth. At that time our product range mirrored the Golden Twenties and became increasingly automotive.
Over the decades our inventiveness and pioneering spirit have remained the central driving forces behind all of our progressive developments. The same is true of the 1980s: with the patent for its own self-developed pipe perforation machine, KÖNIG METALL conquered the tube/pipe processing segment, specifically the sensitive domain of exhaust gas technology. The tube processing principle was later successfully transferred to the production of airbag tubes.
1980s – 2000s: stronger position and new markets
Our family company goes international
An extensive range of processes, profound technical expertise, optimum flexibility and a fair cost-benefit ratio: KÖNIG METALL has long since made a name for itself on the domestic market as an innovative, reliable company. At the start of the 2000s the company took the next logical step following on from this: We launched ourselves on the international market. Branches and collaborations in Italy, Poland, Canada, Russia and Portugal help us ensure economic production and swift reaction times right on the pulse of the market. We can be wherever our customers need us to be.
2017/2018: The present
A snapshot of success
Today the KÖNIG METALL Group are active in six countries and employ more than 1,000 employees worldwide. Our customers include the global players of the automotive and supply industry as well as mechanical engineering. But these milestones are just a snapshot of our current success. That is because what drives us today and every day – well over 100 years after Josef König’s fantastic idea – with undiminished drive and enthusiasm, is our spirit of discovery and ideas of progress. We want to use our innovation to make the difference in future and to set new standards on the market.
The future
A glimpse into the new global mobility
Soon the automotive industry will say goodbye to combustion engines as the primary engine of our mobility. Thanks to our inventions and patents for assisted vacuum insulation (GVI®) we are ready to make our contribution to environmentally-friendly means of transport. Our innovative GVI® systems play an integral part in electrification and e-mobility, the batteries integrated within realizing their full potential.
Find out more:
For more than 100 years, we at the KÖNIG METALL Group have been machining sheet metal, tubes and pipes to customer specification at 8 sites worldwide for the metal and electronics industry, automotive, silencer and airbag industry, for mechanical engineering and various other sectors.