Linde A.G.
Linde A.G.
Abraham Lincoln Strasse 21
6200 Wiesbaden 1
Federal Republic of West Germany
(061) 217701
Public Company
Incorporated: 1879
Employees: 15,000
Sales: DM2.619 billion (US$1.349 billion)
Market Value: DM3.4 billion (US$1.751 billion)
Stock Index: Berlin Frankfurt Munich Dusseldorf
Hamburg
Carle von Linde invented his refrigeration machine in 1875, and formed his own company four years later. Ever since, Linde A.G. has been involved in a wide variety of engineering endeavors, from manufacturing refrigeration and air conditioning systems to the production of rare gases and the construction of an array of industrial plants.
Linde was born in Berndorf on June 11, 1842. He became professor of mechanical engineering at the College of Technology in Munich at the age of 26 and retained that position until he was 68. Linde made the most of his time spent at the school and undertook research in the areas of refrigeration and air and gas liquification processes. For the first ten years of his company’s existence, Linde took a sabbatical from teaching and was its sole director. After the firm was well on its way to success, however, Linde returned and directed its operations from the college. He died on November 16, 1934.
Linde consists of four divisions managed by the executive board of directors in Wiesbaden: the refrigeration and shop equipment division; the industrial gases division; the process plant engineering and construction division; and the hydraulic and materials handling equipment division. The present divisional breakdown of the company did not formally occur until 1972, but these operations have traditionally followed separate paths of development.
Linde’s first scientific breakthrough, which occurred in 1875, was an ammonia compression machine used for manufacturing ice. Four years later, Linde founded Gesellschaft für Linde’s Eismachinen. Initially, orders for refrigeration machines were “almost distressingly slow.” Looking for possible business alternatives, his solution was to engineer and supply ice factories in which his refrigeration machines would be installed. By 1890, over 700 of his machines were employed in 445 breweries across western Europe.
Soon thereafter, the company changed its emphasis from planning ice factories to building and operating cold stores. Linde co-founded Gesellschaft für Markt-und Kühlhallen in Berlin to use his refrigeration technology and expand the cold stores operations. Yet, for over 50 years, even though other firms purchased Linde’s refrigeration systems, and most of the company’s ice factories had been sold, the cold storage operations were never a financial success. As a result, Linde sold all of its holdings in that area during 1982 and 1983.
It was only after 1920 that the company’s sales of refrigeration equipment skyrocketed, due primarily to the acquisition of two major competitors. Industriegas GmbH., located in Mannheim, designed oxygen generators. The value of the purchase for Linde, however, was in the Industriegas subsidiary, Maschinenfabrik Sürth. Sürth, situated near Cologne, was well-known as the first German company to manufacture transportation containers for compressed and liquified gases, and also for the production of various components for refrigeration units. The second significant acquisition was Kulmöbelwerk G.H. Walb and Company of Mainz-Kostheim, a manufacturer of large commercial items such as refrigerated grocery counters.
After their assimilation by Linde, and throughout the 1930’s, the Sürth works built components and systems units for commercial refrigeration, while G.H. Walb made smaller units and domestic products. Commercial production continued through World War II, although these plants were required to provide mining and compression units to the armed forces. Near the end of the war, both the Sürth and the G.H. Walb works were entirely destroyed. By 1949, however, a new machine shop had been built at the Sürth facility, and by 1960 the operation had been completely reconstructed. Soon afterwards, Linde established its entire refrigeration engineering department at this factory. The branches at Sürth and G.H. Walb were then combined in 1964 to form the present refrigeration and shop equipment division.
Carl von Linde’s 1895 invention for producing liquid air led to the growth of the TVT München division of process plant engineering and construction. In addition, his related research with other rare gases laid the groundwork for what is presently the industrial gases division. The separation of these divisions was more for administrative purposes than for anything else, since their operations significantly overlap.
Linde’s initial plan was systematically to improve the design and production of air liquifiers, and he devoted much of his time in Munich to the development of new gas liquification processes. In 1902, the company built the first oxygen production plant and in 1904 constructed the first plant for the production of pure nitrogen. Linde also built the first double-column rectifier, which allowed pure oxygen and nitrogen to be produced in the same apparatus without using any extra energy.
During this time, Linde also built gas production plants in Düsseldorf, Mülheim, Nürnberg, and Dresden. Expanding throughout Europe, the company built plants in Antwerp, Toulouse, Paris, Barcelona, Stockholm, Vienna, and London. In 1907 Linde established the Linde Air Products Company in Cleveland, Ohio. (This plant was extremely successful; eventually acquired by Union Carbide, it is presently called the Linde division.)
Until World War II, Linde was deeply involved in expanding its existing plants. During the war, however, both the plant engineering and construction and industrial gases facilities within Germany were heavily damaged; as a result, they had difficulty re-establishing their operations both at home and abroad. However, the economic prosperity in West Germany during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s led to a rise in domestic demand for liquid oxygen and nitrogen, and contracts with former partners overseas were also renewed.
Linde built the world’s first heavy water nuclear energy plant in 1955 and the first system to separate radioactive elements from nuclear reactor gases in 1959. It also constructed, in 1964, the world’s largest air separation unit in West Germany; two years later the company built the world’s largest ammonia-synthesis plant in the U.S.; in 1970, it devised Europe’s most extensive helium refrigeration system.
The Güldner Aschaffenburg division had its beginnings very early in the century when Linde needed engines to drive the refrigeration machines his firm was manufacturing. He formed a partnership with Dr. Hugo Güldner, a chief design engineer, and Dr. Georg von Krauss, a locomotive manufacturer. The first diesel engines were built at the Güldner works in 1907; by this time, Linde controlled the majority of company stock.
During World War I, the factory was retooled entirely for the war effort, manufacturing iron shells, motor vehicles and aircraft engines. The company recovered quickly in the 1920’s, and expanded its product line to include engines for agricultural equipment and components for the repair of locomotives, railcars, and boats. The Güldner facilities were taken over completely by Linde in 1929 and thereafter concentrated on producing small diesel engines and tractors.
The plant in Aschaffenburg was totally destroyed during an Allied air raid in World War II, but the works were fully functional once again by 1950. A new era for the company began in 1955 with the production of the Hydro car, a platform truck with hydrostatic transmission. Linde then acquired the hydraulics department of Gusswerk Paul Saalmann & Sohne in 1958. By 1969, the Aschaffenburg factory discontinued the production of tractors and diesel engines and concentrated entirely on fork-lift trucks and hydraulic equipment.
There have been a number of important developments during the 1980’s. The refrigeration and shop equipment division has designed its units for energy conservation as well as individually customized them to match contemporary store styles throughout the world. The current product line covers a comprehensive selection of refrigerated and freezer display cases, refrigeration systems, and energy monitoring and control systems. Besides the impressive growth in orders from Arab countries, industrial users, whose needs range from switchgears and transformers to computer rooms and brewery storage, have also contributed to increased profits for Linde.
Much of the innovative research in the utilization of wastewater and sewage has been conducted at Linde’s process plant engineering and construction division. The new techniques it has developed during the 1980’s include the highly economical DS process for storing and utilizing sewage sludge and the Laran process for anaerobic decomposition of contaminated wastewaters. Additional environmental protection research has been conducted in the purification of flue gases, including the mechanism known as smokestack “scrubbers.”
The industrial gases division has maintained a strong market position: stricter environmental protection measures in many countries have led to increased use of oxygen in the steel industry, at foundries, and in the manufacture of electrodes; the wastewater purification field has grown sizably in the past decade; and demand for high-purity gases has increased dramatically in the semiconductor and glass-fiber industries.
The improvement in the Güldner Aschaffenburg division’s sales, due largely to new drive and transmission systems developed in recent years, has been mostly in the form of exports to foreign companies manufacturing agricultural and construction equipment. In addition, in 1985 this division also produced a small, three-ton capacity, fork-lift truck which has helped to increase sales. However, continued growth in this area is limited due to competition, lower prices, and a worldwide overcapacity.
The breakdown of division size in terms of sales is approximately: refrigeration and shop equipment, 19%; process plant engineering and construction, 25%; industrial gases, 21%; hydraulics and materials handling, 35%. Linde’s long-term goals are to increase inventory turnover, maintain nearly full employment of its facilities, and retain the company’s reputation as a world leader in the construction industry.
Principal Subsidiaries
Still GmbH; Matra-Werke GmbH; Linde Technische Gase Berlin; °Celsior GmbH; Selas-Kirchner GmbH; Mapag Maschinenfabrik GmbH; Tega-Technische Gase and Gasetechnik GmbH; Rheinkälte GmbH; Wohnungsbau Linde GmbH; Commercium Versicherungsagenfur und Immobilien GmbH; Werburg and Messebau GmbH; Markt-und Kulhallen Aktiengesell-schaft; Wagner Fördertechnik GmbH & Co.; Société d’Application des Techniques Linde S.A.R.L.; Linde Froid et Climatisation S.A.R.L.; Fenwick-Linde S.A.R.L.; Fenwick Location S.A.; Still S.A.; Airgaz S.A.R.L.; Abello, Oxigeno- Linde S.A.; Carretillas E Hidraulica, S.A.; Walter Stöcklin S.A.E.; Linde Technische Gase GmbH; Linde Kältetechnik GmbH; TEGA-Technische Gase GmbH; Linde Refrigeration Ltd.; Linde Hydraulics Ltd.; Linde Kältetechnik AG; Linde Fördertechnik AG; Linde Holding AG; Pangas, Likos AG; Linde K.T. Italiana S.p.a.; Linde Güldner Italiana S.p.a.; Still Italia S.p.a.; Sarca N.V.; Still N.V.; L’Oxyhydrique Internationale S.A.; Still Intern Transport B.V.; Linde International B.V.; Airgas Nederland B.V.; N.V.W.A. Hoek’s Machine-en Zuurstoffabrief; A/S Dansk lit- & Brintfabrik; Linde K.T. Norge A/S; Linde-Hellas E.P.E.; Linarco Ltd., Saudi Arabia; Fedgas (Pty) Ltd., South Africa; Linde Far East Engineering, Ltd., Japan; Linde (Australia) Pty. Ltd.; Linde Gas Pty. Ltd.; Lotepro Corp.; Selas Fluid Processing Corp.; Baker Material Handling Corp.; Linde Hydraulics Corp.; Lagus Capital Corp.; Lotepro Plants Ltd., Canada; Linde do Brasil Ltda., Brazil; Aeroton Gases Industrials Ltda., Brazil.