Since it produced its first axles over 50 years ago, NAF AG has been recognised for its ability to provide customers with innovative and practical drive solutions to their individual requirements. Peter Mercer reports.
DRIVEN BY INNOVATION N
AF Neunkirchener Achsenfabrik AG is a third-generation family-owned German company that has been producing axles and gearboxes for agricultural, construction and forestry machines for more than 50 years. Today its 450 employees at its headquarters and production centre in Neunkirchen am Brand in Bavaria produce axles, planetary drives, gearboxes, differentials and other drive components for customers all over the world. NAF AG is widely recognised as the market leader in powered bogie axles for forestry machines. The company was founded in 1960 by George Hemmerlein, a member of the Bavarian state parliament, and entrepreneur Kaspar Lochner from Munich, and it initially produced
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steering and rigid axles for construction machines. In 1970 a research and development centre was opened in Munich. In 1974 the company’s ownership changed, and in 2002 the formal status changed to a stock company, but all the shares are still held by the family. A key year in the development of NAF AG was 1976 when it began to produce bogie axles for forestry machines. “At that time four manufacturers of forestry machines in Scandinavia started to use hydrostatic drive lines and we received orders from all four for bogie axles with internal gearboxes,” says CEO Alfred Saam. “These were produced in quite small quantities in different designs for each customer but it was an important step for us into the for-
estry machine sector. Axles and other driveline components for the forestry industry today account for around two-thirds of our business. Indeed those four companies that approached us nearly 40 years ago are still regular customers. In addition, our speciality is still the flexibility in development and production that we demonstrated in meeting their different requirements and we continue to work very closely with customers to exactly fulfil their needs. In particular our Munich-based R&D team uses the latest technology, as well as more than 45 years of experience, to bring our customers innovative and practical drive solutions.” Today NAF AG’s products for forestry applications include transfer cases, planetary rigid axles, planetary bogie axles and portal
