New release: "Companies and People of the German Agricultural Machinery Industry"
02.03.2016“The further backward you look, the further forward you can see,” Winston Churchill once said of history. The same goes for the tradition of a company—a fact acknowledged by Dr.-Ing. Klaus Krombholz in his book, “Companies and People of the German Agricultural Machinery Industry.” Dr. Krombholz dedicates two chapters of his “who’s who” on the German agricultural machinery industry to the PETKUS Group.
Originally from Stockach in Baden-Württemberg (DE), Krombholz spent his working life in the German Democratic Republic conglomerate “progress” (Kombinat Fortschritt) and was intensely involved with the plant construction of PETKUS from the mid-1960s onwards. He has already authored several specialist books on the history of the agricultural machinery industry, including “100 Years of Agricultural Technology” (100 Jahre Landtechnik).
When PETKUS was founded in Wutha, Thuringia (DE) in 1852, then under the name “C.F. Roeber Sons – Specialist Factory for Cleaning and Sorting Machines” (C.F. Röber Söhne – Spezialfabrik für Reinigungs- und Sortiermaschinen), the founding vision was to produce practical and reliable processing technology. Looking back, PETKUS has succeeded over three centuries at setting technology standards in the industry. Strategic forward thinking has modernized the company and established it globally: keep tradition intact, but generate added value and offer coordinated process technologies with comprehensive solutions.
“Company chronicles often fail to portray the performance of their own companies in an unbiased manner,” writes Klaus Dreyer, former CEO of Amazone-Werke. “In the end it is not about how you yourself view the company, but about how the company’s actions and products are seen by outsiders, particularly by customers in agricultural practice as well as in the field of research.”
The book “Companies and People of the German Agricultural Machinery Industry” can be obtained from its author, Dr.-Ing. Klaus Krombholz.