This is 60 years of inventive spirit, experience and technical passion. Join us on a short journey through time, from the first developments in Baden-Württemberg all the way to highly automated slicing solutions for modern food processing. Every milestone tells a piece of the company's story: bold ideas, consistent advancement and the ambition to build machines that are precise, reliable and ready for the future.
60 years of schiwa: that means six decades full of inventive spirit, technical passion and consistent advancement. Join us on a short journey through time, from the first developments in Baden-Württemberg all the way to highly automated slicing solutions for modern food processing.
Since 1966, schiwa has stood for technical precision, tailor-made solutions and engineering with vision. What began with the company's founding in Haubersbronn quickly developed further: in 1975 the company moved to Plüderhausen, the location that remains closely tied to schiwa's history to this day. Since then, not only has the team grown continuously, but the company premises have also been expanded and developed step by step. Over the decades, this created a site where experience, manufacturing expertise and innovative strength come together.
From early on, what still defines schiwa today became apparent: the ambition not merely to improve existing processes, but to rethink them. As early as the 1970s, the company sent a strong signal of precision and innovative strength with the first electronic scale, invented by Manfred O. Schindler. The 1980s brought further important developments, including the line distributor as well as the first processor-controlled systems in 1986/87. With the construction of the first slicer in 1987, schiwa reached a milestone that decisively shaped the path toward today's highly automated slicing solutions.
In the years that followed, schiwa remained true to its line of innovation. In 1991 the company built a multi-component system with three slicers, before taking another important step toward networked and high-performance system control with the introduction of CAN-BUS in 1997. The 2000s added stainless steel gearboxes, stainless steel motors, the guillotine for Twinpack and the switch to Windows-based controls, developments that made the systems even more robust, precise and future-proof.
With the 2-spindle slicer in 2009 and the start of the slicer line in 2010, schiwa once again set important impulses. That same year also saw the development of the PKC/PKS blades and the combined horizontal/vertical divider. In 2014, the move to an open hygienic design and stainless steel motors marked another key step, for even better accessibility, easier cleaning and a consistently hygiene-compliant machine design.
The history of innovation continued consistently: in 2016 with the 4-spindle slicer and the format turning unit, in 2017 with the Cracker Grabber and in 2020 with the X-ray scanner. At the same time, schiwa keeps its sights firmly set on the future. New components such as robot handling, the Yield Gripper and the cake slice divider open up additional possibilities for future system concepts and can increasingly feed into customer-specific solutions going forward. In this way, schiwa responds to the rising demands of the industry and does not merely keep pace with the technologically necessary change but actively helps shape it, for even more automation, efficiency, flexibility and process reliability in food processing.
60 years of schiwa therefore stand for more than just company history. They stand for consistent innovation, partnership-based customer proximity and engineering that has delivered reliable performance for decades.
Congratulations on 60 years of schiwa, and on a story that continues.