120-year anniversary of DECKER Anlagenbau: From foundry to high-tech PV plant engineering

GERMANY: How do you keep the ball rolling for 120 years? Well, that’s exactly what the DECKER plant engineering company in Berching (Bavaria, Germany) did. A keen sense of upcoming technology developments enabled the German company to stay in tune with changing demands in the global industrial markets.

Today, the company produces silicon recycling plants for the photovoltaic (PV) industry - and once again shows that the company keeps the finger on the pulse of technology. Once the company was in the business of casting iron and steel, now its experts produce custom equipment for wet chemical surface treatments. The company history reads like a history book on modern industrial development.

Brilliant ideas do not just appear like magic. The DECKER Company keeps growing with the increasing demands of its customers, and the company leaders always smartly adjusted the production to the changing markets. The company started as a foundry in Nuremberg (Germany) and turned into a plant engineering company in the beginning of the 1960s. People who visit parks in and around Nuremberg may still rest on one of the many park benches, which the original foundry produced in the 1930s.

Today, DECKER installations are used in metal processing industries in procedures involving anodizing, black finishing, chromating and phosphatizing. For fifty years, the engineer Hans Schnyder maintained continuity in quickly changing times. He and his long-time chief executive Manfred Götz constantly searched for new markets using the development of their biggest customers as a yardstick. Among their large customers were such industry giants as Siemens and Wacker.

The DECKER Co. was among the first to build silicon cleaning plants for the semiconductor industry. In 2000, the company took up the high-tech development of contact-free bearings based on high-temperature superconductors for the IT industry.

Given this history, it cannot surprise anybody that the company got involved in the emerging photovoltaic industry in recent years. The DECKER Co., under the guidance of the new CEO, Kay Rehberg, developed a recycling plant, which cleared the path to economical large-scale silicon recycling. In this development, the company was able to build on decades of experience in the wet chemical surface treatment.

The DECKER Co. is again among the first to recognize the emerging demand for efficient facilities, which can dispose of huge amounts of photovoltaic equipment. The system has received the innovation award for the recycling system at this year’s Intersolar Europe. The DECKER Co. has good reason to be proud of this award.

The expanding global markets play a large role in the company plans. China is the largest and most important market for the DECKER Co. Stepping into new territories is part of the DECKER history. It is also the basis for a tradition of mapping out a successful path into the future.