With the journey of Reiners + Fürst starting back in 1945 by Walter Reiners and Stefan Fürst through their manufacturing processes carried out in the basement of the Schlafhorst office building in Mönchengladbach, today reaches the whole world with a growing competence in the production of spinning components for ring spinning machines, spinning rings and ring travellers. Representing the fourth generation, Mr. Benjamin Reiners, at their headquarters located in Mönchengladbach, answered the questions of our Publishing Group, regarding the history of the company, next-generation products, international markets and many other topics.
Reiners + Fürst is a company having a long-standing background with operations devoted to spinning mills going back many years. Could you share your success story that has led to attain a world-wide recognition across the textile industry with our readers?
Certainly yes, I’d love to. R+ F was founded in 1945 but the background is much older, as you know my great grandfather, he started his first job after becoming an engineer at Schlafhorst, which was back then a very very small, tiny repair shop company in Mönchengladbach with the owner named Schlafhorst but also my great grandfather was married to a lady who was from the Monforts family and my great grandfather, before starting to work at Schlafhorst, also applied for a job at the big well-known company Monforts, but August Monforts, the Founder said ‘I don’t have a job for you now, why don’t you check out Schafhorst, it’s a small company, but I know Mr. Schlafhorst very well, he is a good person, so start to work with him. So my great grandfather went to Sclafhorst and worked there.
He liked the job but then after a couple of years he wrote again to Mr. August Monforts and asked a second time to get a job at Monforts, because Schlafhorst was too small for him and then he received a letter back from Mr. Monforts, who wrote; ‘Then make Schlafhorst big’, so this is the starting point. After a couple of more years Mr. Schafhorst did have a son but he did not want to continue the company so Mr. Schlafhorst gave the company basically to my great grandfather. This was in 1904. And then my great grandfather started to make Schafhorst big. Then his son Dr. Walter Reiners, stepped into the company in the 40’s and also continued to grow Schlafhorst.
Following this, World War II started, whereas Schlafhorst was destroyed very much and did not have the permission to produce after the war right away, so my grandfather Dr. Walter Reiners set together with his best engineer for the development of the machines; Mr. Fürst after WW II, and they were thinking of what to do, what can we do now, because Schlafhorst was still destroyed and could not produce so they had to do something else. And then, by doing this they already started Reiners + Fürst and after some thoughts they decided to start to produce the so-called “Heimnudler”, a small kitchen tool to produce pasta. This product was sold in shops here in Mönchengladbach and it sold very well. They also had some other thoughts to produce alarm clocks. And another product was a ‘Hand Knotter’, to knot two pieces of yarn threads, this is not for spinning, it is used for weaving for example. This was all in 1945, until 1947 and everything was going on in the basement of the office building of the Schlafhorst Headquarter, because this was not destroyed, with some former workers of Schlafhorst who joined the team of Mr. Reiners and Mr. Fürst.
And then only after 2 years they got an idea from someone else who was travelling the textile markets, saying ‘why don’t you produce spinning rings and ring travellers’, because it was needed all around the area, as the industry was picking up again. We used to have more than 40 spinning mills just around this area. I have here an almost original old traveller, it has a quality control stamp of 1949. That is pretty old and still I’m sure you could spin a good quality yarn with it, maybe not highest quality yarn as today but still it would work. I keep this with a lot of pride.
And yes, business was picking up, Schlafhorst was being rebuilt and also started to produce, so my grandfather Dr. Walter Reiners was totally busy with Schlafhorst as well as Mr. Fürst, the co-founder of R+F was also totally in business, constructing machines for Schlafhorst and then in 1952, we moved to this side, just next door. Mr. Fürst took care of this company since then by himself, basically having the permission, this is a story I don’t know if it is true, to come here after 3 pm. Before that he had to work at Schlafhorst and after 3 pm He could work for R+F. This is also where a lot of his heart went into and also all the machines that we used to use back then, were all designed by Mr. Fürst, you know at home I was told by his son that he sat at home sketching some new ideas on a piece of newspaper and then he gave it here to tranform them into real drawings and it worked. Mr. Fürst was one of the major inventors of the Autoconer; the winding machine, still running you know. This is a copy of the original founding document basically. This is where, it was put outside for every worker to read that this new company, which has been founded on the 5’th of November, 1945. That it is a new founded company and this is signed by my grandfather and here he asked or requested all the workers to help each other,you know both companies, to build up for a good future. So this is how it all started and then basically the internationalization started later, first it was very national, but I also know the first agent we ever had besides Schlafhorst, because Schlafhorst used to be our agent as well, was a company, an agent in Brazil and this was I think from 1956. So, this is probably the starting point of internationalization.
Moreover, also back then, the markets were totally different; Japan had a large manufacturing of yarns with its own ring and traveller manufacturer who served the local market. Additionally, we had 2 or 3 competitors in Germany alone besides the one in Switzerland upto today. Also the US market and India were taking care of themselves and China of course too. So the markets pretty much had their own producers of the products. And then suddenly it started to become more and more international. Our products were sold in Japan or in the U.S and so forth and this really maybe early starting point was end of the 50’s, really I think it increased more and more in the 60’s and 70’s.
What kind of innovations are you offering to your customers for more efficient operation of the ring spinning machines and to increase the productivity of the enterprises?
We are always improving our production to improve our products to make the variation of the products, from one ring or traveller to the next, to the 10 thousands’, to the 100 thousands’. It is very important for our customers to be able to rely on our products, our rings and travellers, that they have the same yarn quality from spindle to spindle.. We work very hard on that, but also right now we are doing a trial at a Turkish customer with a further developed ring traveller, from the next generation, we are very excited about it, the trial just started, so this also means that we are constantly doing something and we are especially expecting a reduction of the friction of the ring and traveller system and definitely less energy consumption, higher possible spinning speeds and hopefully also extended service life of the traveller.
What advantages does Reiners + Fürst offer to businesses with its TURBO spinning rings and optimized travellers for compact and siro-compact yarns?
First of all our ring travellers guarantee the longest service life combined with constant quality from spindle to spindle as I said which pays off during its service life at least twice, so you can rely on it. You buy our ring and you don’t have to think about it for a long time. Our travellers, we just introduced our latest version of compact travellers in the market and they are running very well at our customers worldwide, they give very good yarn value results combined with reduced friction line to extend the service life and maybe also the spindle speeds.
As a company, where do you position the Turkish textile industry? Can you provide information regarding your market share in Turkey?
Definitely for us Turkey is one the most important markets all over the world. We have let’s say, 4 major markets, which are all important for us:China, India, Pakistan and Turkey and Turkey is not the 4th. It’s all those 4, they are all very important for us, but Turkey is especially important because it is close to us, nearby and to handle the customers it is also good, because I think at least with a lot of customers we share the same mentality. With customers they also want to have high quality, high efficiency, labour is expensive and also hard to get, so we have the same feelings and thinking. From our calculations we think that we have the biggest market share in Turkey comparing those 4 markets, , of around 40%.
How would you evaluate the first quarter of 2017 in terms of your targets with respect to the Turkish market? What sales figures do you aim to achieve by the end of 2017?
We talked about it recently but the first quarter was difficult due to the development of the Turkish market itself, but now we think that it has settled down, the engine has started to run again. And we have also received some new big orders from Turkey, so it’s starting up and we think that despite the first quarter we are expecting even growth in Turkey for this year as compared to the previous year, of at least 3%-5%.
What are your goals for the global markets in 2017? Could you mention about the markets that you have a strong presence in and your goals set for those markets?
Worldwide we are expecting growth for R+F between 5-7% this year. The biggest share will come from China, because there are still big investments made in China especially for high quality and we think that we can get a very good share of that. Also Pakistan and India will contribute to this growth and of course Turkey as we mentioned earlier.
In general we are very optimistically looking forward; we are very secure that the developments we are making are going in the right direction. Customers are telling us that we should keep on doing this and they are ordering more and more. Sometimes we have difficulties supplying all of the wanted products. And also we are constantly improving our service, help our customers, which we also receive more and more response that the customers like it very much.
