The world’s strongest chains pewag

THE WORLD’S STRONGEST CHAINS

pewag has established itself as the ‘technological innovator’ in the high quality chain business. Marco Siebel spoke to pewag Austria GmbH’s managing director, Dr Joachim Haidacher.

Pewag Austria GmbH has its headquarters in Graz, a city in southern Austria, and is one of the oldest chain manufacturers in the world - its history can be traced back to the 15th century. The following timetable gives an interesting overview of the most important events concerning the origins and development of a company rich in tradition: 1479 the first documented references of a forging plant in Brückl; 1787 the foundation of a chain forgery in Kapfenberg; 1803 the foundation of a chain forgery in Graz; 1912 saw the production of the first snow chain worldwide; and finally 1923 the merger of plants in Graz and Kapfenberg, establishing the company’s current name ‘pewag’.

The general public knows pewag for its snow chains and do-it-yourself products, while the professionals associate pewag with highly reliable chains and their accessories such as forestry chains, hoist and conveyor chains, lifting and lashing chains and tyre protection chains.

Leading in technical chains

The brand pewag stands for innovation, quality and service and has been a leader in technical chain manufacturing for 100 years. pewag Austria focuses mainly on technical chains, particularly for lifting purposes. It offers a number of high strength round steel and profile steel chains for hoists and chain drives. A particularly significant innovation developed by the company was the use of chains with an intelligent and stiff cross profile in the hoist technique.

Pewag employs over 1000 people worldwide, and has recently expanded one of its Austrian production facilities. Joachim Haidacher says, “pewag has hundreds of years of experience in the manufacturing of chains and their components. Today

the brand name pewag stands for wellengineered state-of-the-art quality products. So we decided to add a new product line to those that our customers are already familiar with: pewag lifting points.”

PLGW/profilift gamma winner

pewag has introduced a worldwide novelty on the market: a patented tool-free lifting point called pewag winner profilift gamma. It is a lifting point for the tool-free anchorage, which can be tightened and aligned manually. It is 360° rotatable, contains a patented and interchangeable special screw, which is 100 per cent crack-tested as well as covered with a chromate VI-freeprotection against corrosion and marked with WLL and thread size. Each lifting point is marked with an individual serial number, that allows traceability. pewag profilift gamma is optionally also available with a UNC-thread.

Besides that, pewag offers a lot of other lifting points such as the PLAW, PLBW, PLE, and PLDW (see www.pewag.com). Most of those items have features which make them a little bit better than those which are currently on the market. Innovation, dependability and service are three main points that pewag uses to convince customers to use its products. Future expectations

pewag has built itself a reputation by producing most of the world’s best engineered industrial chains and chains accessories. From the auto industry through the mining and shipping industries to the defence industry, pewag has a proven track record which it is confident it can maintain in the future.

Joachim Haidacher says: “As existing markets grow (the USA, for example) and new markets emerge, the demands for highly dependable industrial products will rise. The fact that people attach the label ‘dependable’ to the name pewag enables us to develop and launch new products, either at the request of customers, or on our own initiative, as with the launch of the pewag lifting points.”

Europe may be slowing, but the rest of the world is growing, and pewag has managed to be as strong as the chains it is famous for. n