Emhart Glass, one of the leading suppliers of machines, controls, and parts to the glass container industry, has announced that 2012 is its centenary year.

The company dates its birth to 1912, when Hartford-Fairmont was founded in Hartford, Connecticut, USA by Bill Lorenz, William Honiss and Karl Peiler. The company was created to market a design for the paddle-gob feeder, which used gravity to automatically feed molten glass into moulds. In 1924, it became ‘Hartford-Empire’ and patented the individual section (IS) machine for automatically manufacturing glass containers.

According to the company, the 1940s saw it move into automated inspection, as well as the first of many acquisitions that would turn the company into a major industrial group. Renaming itself ‘Emhart’ and later Emhart Glass, the firm built a Europe-wide sales and manufacturing operation from the 1950s, with plants and branches in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the UK.

The acquisition of Swedish manufacturer Sundsvalls Verkstäder in 1952 was an important milestone and during the 70s and 80s, it was followed by the first sales and service operations in the Far East. In 1987, the group transferred its headquarters to Switzerland.

“I’m very proud to be part of a company with such a long and impressive history,” said Martin Jetter, Emhart Glass’ President. “It’s humbling to look back at what our predecessors achieved – they had such brilliant ideas, and they built up such a strong and enduring business too. Our challenge today is to live up to their legacy by serving our customers with new ways to improve the technologies we’ve inherited, and to add to them with innovations of our own, for the benefit of our customers and the entire glass industry,” he added.