Our company
In 1956, the future company founder Werner Sänger, who was employed as an authorized signatory in the local leather factory, was confronted with the problem that internal transport trolleys could no longer be used because the wheel bearings were defective.
An inquiry to the manufacturer revealed a surprisingly high and unacceptable price for the spare part, a roller bearing. After consulting the wheel manufacturer, it turned out that the manufacturer was also paying an unusually high price for this purchased part, as there was only one manufacturer in Germany.
The owner of the wheel factory took Werner Sänger’s statement that this part should be much cheaper to manufacture as an opportunity to propose a deal to him – he provided an interest-free loan of 5000 DM for the procurement of any necessary equipment and machinery. The loan was to be repaid in the form of deliveries from the production of roller bearings.
Together with his father Adolf Sänger, a company was founded and the necessary equipment (mainly hand lever lathes and drilling machines) was set up in the attic of the house and in a room that was no longer fully used for agricultural purposes. Adolf Sänger had experience in the processing of metals and the use of processing machines. He was available full-time for production until his death in 1959, while Werner Sänger, also for financial reasons, worked less and less.
Nevertheless, his weekends, evenings and nights were fully scheduled and filled with work. The circumstances under which this production took place would be absolutely unthinkable today and for today’s Managing Director Hans-Jürgen Sänger, this was a formative time as a young boy. Everything, but also everything, revolved around the word ROLLENLAGER.
After the death of Adolf Sänger, Werner Sänger had to make a decision and give up his job in order to create the premises for a growing production. Production grew and by 1959 the company was already employing 8 workers and one employee and generating a turnover of around DM 140,000, which almost tripled by 1962. The customer base expanded considerably and the many smaller agricultural machinery manufacturers in Münsterland, Emsland and southern Germany in particular increasingly used these roller bearings in the manufacture of their agricultural machinery.
To this day, spare parts for these machines are still being ordered from all over the world. The second important area of transport equipment, wheels and castors, developed in leaps and bounds and production methods changed at an unprecedented pace.
The result was a solid mechanical production of roller bearings and a workforce of around 20 employees.
The current main shareholder Hans-Jürgen Sänger joined the company in 1976. Werner Sänger, who from then on was mostly responsible for the technical development of the company, took over the management.
This is how the Sänger company, which has since been transformed into a GmbH & Co. KG, developed into the main supplier for the wheel industry and the remaining agricultural machinery manufacturers. The range was rounded off with the production of tube sections and plastic articles for the wheel industry.
The takeover of our main competitor in 1993 put us in a kind of monopoly position for this product category. At the end of the 1980s, we began to include the manufacture and wholesale of fishing tackle in our service package, which led to the reciprocal employment of our staff. This wholesale business developed from the manufacture of deep-sea lures known as pilkers, which we were able to produce easily with our machinery.
The industrial and largely automated large-scale production of roller bearings for the wheel and roller industry also held its own against increasing competition from Asia and has been consolidated to this day. The range has been expanded in line with the possibilities, so that dependence on a few sectors has been reduced.
Today, Sänger is still the only supplier in the world with such an extensive and sophisticated range of roller bearings in metric and inch dimensions.