Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK

Posted on by admin

Table of contents

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
Stefan Wolf

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK

9 pictures

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
wolf

1/9
The CTEK makers (five of 130, from left): Andreas Naslund (46, General Manager North America), Peter Caris (67, volunteer test driver), Nichlas Sjoselius (42, chief technician), Johan Holmberg (46) and Jon Lind (42 , CEO – i.e. boss of the whole).

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
wolf

2/9
The CTEK headquarters is somehow very Swedish. It’s much more modern inside.

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
wolf

3/9
Stress is a foreign word in tool and prototype construction. Do you know the Jack Daniel’s advertisement? Just as.

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
wolf

4/9
Veteran Nils Salåker (54) with a housing shape from the 3-D printer.

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
wolf

5/9
Annamartha Andersson (51) in the battery test room. The tangle of cables belongs and is well thought out.

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
wolf

6/9
Per Eriksson (51) in the wave test room. And that’s not a wind tunnel.

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
wolf

7/9
Fortunately, Camilla Lofstrom (35) stays dry in the wet test bench, while Flo Albertsson (42) checks the mechanics of the self-developed long-term test bench.

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
wolf

8/9
An inconspicuous barn on the outside, a high-tech garage for heli (in the background) and the CTEK-sponsored Porsche 911 RS of the 2013 European Rally Champion Mats Myrsell on the inside.

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
wolf

9/9
Bestseller and novelty: the 5 A charging current supplying MXS 5.0 (above) for 89 euros is the popular all-rounder for motorcycle and car owners; the Lithium XS (129 euros) is – the name suggests it gently – specially made for lithium-ion phosphate batteries.

accesories

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
Market leader in battery chargers

What IKEA is in terms of family furniture, CTEK is in battery chargers for end users: market leader. The Swedes supply more than half of all electric vehicles used in Germany. Reason enough to visit the northern lights.

Klaus Herder

02/05/2015

Vikmanshyttan looks a bit like the GDR in 1989, with the difference that the cars smell less and the residents are much more fun. Otherwise, the 900-inhabitant dump, located in the deepest central Swedish province, is a great place to commit suicide if you don’t plan to do anything else in the evening. In short: Vikmanshyttan is infinitely bleak at first sight. And the village community center vying for customers with the charm of a VEB canteen – a cultural and culinary highlight of the community – doesn’t make things any better.

Buy complete article

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK
Market leader in battery chargers

4 pages) as PDF

€ 2.00

Buy now

So there are not really many reasons to torture yourself from Stockholm, which is around 180 kilometers south-east, via radar-trapped country roads to the south of the densely wooded and hilly province of Dalarna. Yes, there is a good reason: This is the CTEK headquarters. It is here that we think up and develop what around a million charger buyers worldwide buy each year and what manufacturers such as Alfa Romeo, Audi, BMW, Corvette, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lexus, Maserati, Mercedes, Porsche, Rolls-Royce, Scania and Yamaha have as original parts in Have program. CTEK (which probably stands for “Charger Technology”, whereby no one can conclusively explain the K) was founded in 1997 by the Swede Bengt Wahlquist.

Meanwhile 130 employees

And more by chance, because originally the charger topic was just one of many with which Wahlquist’s consulting firm Creator, which had been in existence since 1982, had to do with commissioned work from 1992 onwards. However, the research and development program ended abruptly when the Creator customer was bought up by an American corporation and the developers suddenly found themselves pretty much alone with their charger know-how. What to do? Exactly: with CTEK, set up a company that directs the collected knowledge into economically usable channels. CTEK got started with at least four employees, now there are 130, 70 of whom work in Sweden and take care of research and development in the aforementioned Vikmanshyttan and also organize global sales from there. Production takes place in three factories in the Chinese city of ten million Shenzhen, a special economic zone in the south-east of the country that borders directly on Hong Kong. 19 CTEK employees on site ensure that hard-working Chinese hands actually assemble what was conceived in Vikmanshyttan. The goods are shipped from China to Ghent, Belgium, and from there they go out into the world – to over 70 countries.

The Swedes are now the undisputed top dog in German-speaking Europe and Northern Europe with a market share of over 50 percent in the end-consumer market. The success story really took off when Porsche launched its first own battery charger in 2002 and showed interest in the CTEK developments. Shortly afterwards, the cooperation was sealed and the first OEM battery charger (OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer, in German: Original Equipment Manufacturer) came onto the market. The Porsche example was followed by Mercedes and Ferrari, and suddenly more and more well-known vehicle manufacturers decided to use the CTEK devices under their own name.

All articles on the subject of batteries: screwdriver tips, product tests and background information

Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK

workshop


Adviser: the battery

Everything about the battery

read more

A very manageable, almost family-run company

The Swedes have been playing on the German motorcycle accessories market more and more since 2005. In addition to their rather aggressive marketing, they were helped by the fact that the suppliers who had dominated the market up to then reacted rather cautiously to (battery) technology developments and at times even completely withdrew from market segments (BMW / CAN -Bus) had withdrawn. CTEK made clever use of the resulting gaps, impressed with the almost foolproof usability of the devices, which were also convincing in terms of touch, and did a lot of clearing in various tests – this is how success stories are written.

Despite all the business success, CTEK has always remained a very manageable, almost family-run company. Of course, the German visitor to Sweden is always slightly inclined to succumb to the Bullerbu and Lonneberga kitsch in Pippi Longstocking Land, but even at second glance there seems to be something about the very special charm of the country and its people. This is also the case with CTEK, because it is thought up, developed, and now and then also discarded, not in sterile functional buildings in the middle of a barren industrial area, but in historical sites. Vikmanshyttan, located in the Bergslagen mining area, has a long tradition as the location of an ironworks, a forge and a steel mill. Up until the end of the 1970s, production took place here on a grand scale, with around 1,000 workers producing coveted special steel at the best of times.

Quite rustic on the outside, an ultra-modern development center on the inside

Those days are long gone, but the extensive factory site with its huge halls still exists and is used diligently. As an indoor go-kart track, as a location for well-known touring car racing teams. And also as the CTEK headquarters. What usually looks quite rustic from the outside is a state-of-the-art development center on the inside. In addition to various CAD workstations in a well-suspended administration building, lots of test stands take up a lot of space in the halls. Long-term tests with countless batteries, electromagnetic compatibility tests, water resistance tests, endurance tests of switches and many other tests must be successfully passed by the devices before the developers give the go-ahead for series production. CTEK also builds prototypes and tools itself. The long metalworking tradition of the location suits the charger professionals: Experts and machines are available in the best quality.

Great computers, well-equipped laboratories and impressive machinery can also be found elsewhere – what makes the difference and the success? Clear (cliche) answer: the human factor. In any case, you have to get this impression when you stroll around the factory premises in the middle of town and see how the Swedes – and not just the CTEK employees – do their jobs. The term “relaxed” is probably best. Not relaxed and silty, but relaxed and concentrated. Very self-confident and with a purposeful looseness in dealing with colleagues and superiors, which can make the observer, who is used to German hierarchical constrictions, almost envious. At lunchtime, groups of lively chatting CTEK developers stroll relaxed into the said VEB canteen – correct: the village community center – and suddenly even the most ignorant MOTORRAD writer realizes that this is Sweden and not the GDR. No matter how sad Vikmanshyttan may seem at first glance.

It is not the looks that make the success

Somewhat ugly on the outside, really hui on the inside – that’s how it goes on when the Swedish tour guide takes the German visitors with them at the end of their flying visit to Mats. “Mats does some motorsport and is supported by CTEK,” is the unspectacular announcement. Okay, probably a third-rate auxiliary drifter who slides through the Swedish forests with worn out equipment and occasionally picks up a charger as a sponsor’s morning gift. But we are polite people and take a look at the guy. So much for the expectations.

When the door of Mats Myrsell’s inconspicuous barn opens, the author of these lines and the otherwise by no means embarrassed photographer are speechless: Behind the private helicopter are four (!) Porsche 911 RS in the finest rally trim – and hanging by the way, actually on CTEK chargers. The extremely impressive collection of the European Historic Rally Champion 2012 and 2013 is perhaps the best symbol of what this trip to Sweden has shown: It is not the looks that make the success of the Northmen. Not everything that initially looks boring is. Incidentally, this also applies to Vikmanshyttan.

Interview with Johan Holmberg


Factory visit to the charger manufacturer CTEK


wolf

Johan Holmberg, Regional Manager at CTEK for the German-speaking market.

“We want to be number one”

MOTORRAD spoke to Johan Holmberg (46) who, as Regional Manager for CTEK, is responsible for the German-speaking market, among other things. Johan acted as the tour guide for the tour and always proved himself to be in control of the situation, even in the Swedish no man’s land.

Why is the CTEK headquarters located in the deepest Swedish province of all places?
This is a historic location, the German metallurgist Anders Angerstein came here as early as 1693 and founded a forge. In modern times, the Stora company, Europe’s oldest stock corporation, manufactured special steel here. And we also have a lot of space and peace here to develop our products.
How long does it take from the first thought to the finished product??
Ideally, this takes around six months, of which the internal test processes take up a lot of time. Before we can even develop and produce a pilot series, however, many studies are carried out on the economic and technical feasibility. And since we now work with practically all leading manufacturers of premium vehicles, our development is of course also based on the requirements of the manufacturers. And that takes time. Which is also good, because the high quality standards are noticeable, for example, in the form of an extremely low rate of complaints. At CTEK, this is less than one percent.
What does your typical customer look like?
A typical CTEK customer is a 40-year-old Swede who is very interested in vehicles and enjoys working on them himself. But of course it can also be a 50-year-old German …
How big is the market for battery chargers anyway? And how many do you sell?
Around 400 million lead-acid batteries are manufactured around the world each year. And each of them has to be loaded at some point. Since inception, CTEK has sold over 6.2 million battery chargers, and last year we shipped over a million for the first time.

And where do you want to go?
One thing is clear: we want to become number one worldwide. We are already in Northern Europe, and we are trying hard to do the rest as well. Awareness of battery care and battery charging continues to grow, so the chances are not that bad.
What development potential do chargers still have? What’s in the pipeline?
Absolute safety as well as simple installation and usability remain the main development goals in addition to the pure function. In 2015 we will introduce a new charger for the motorcycle and power sports market. More chargers and smart accessories will also come, but we’re not going to reveal any more yet …
We saw at Mats Myrsell that you are also involved in motorsport. Who else is supported by CTEK??
For example Mattias Ekstrom, two-time DTM champion, who comes from Falun, which is not far from Vikmanshyttan. And of course Valerie Thompson, who set five world speed records with the motorcycle. I’ll put you in touch …

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *