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Report: Visit to the Magura factory
Report: Visit to the Magura factory
Specialist in grips, brakes and handlebars
At Magura, the relics of German motorcycle construction slumber dusty in attic shelves. The supplier from the Swabian town of Bad Urach has been accompanying the hard-fighting motorcycle industry in Germany for decades. Where does the specialist for grips, brakes and handlebars stand today??
Markus Jahn
05/24/2012
“How old?” The question asks Detlef Glaser, a lively 48 year old and head of the “Plastics Technology” division in Hulben, high up on the Swabian Alb. Sentimental things seem alien to him, he prefers a pithy appearance. The resolute Swabian therefore provides the answer to his question himself: “People over 40 know Magura still from the Kreidler moped. And those below only associate Magura with bicycles. But now I’ll show you what Magura can do with motorcycles today! “
What Glaser throws so casually into the room simply means nothing more than a deep, really bloody industrial cut, without which there would hardly have been any survival in the 80s to 90s of the last century: The steelworks in the Ruhr area shut down Car factories bowed their heads to the Japanese, and with Zundapp, Kreidler, Hercules and Maico, apart from BMW, the last of the West German motorcycle manufacturers said goodbye. Adler, NSU, Horex and what they were all called were flat long before that. At that time, the post-war wonderland BRD was on the way to the amusement park and the workers at Magura were looking for new business areas.
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If you look at the products of the traditional manufacturer since the company was founded in 1893 – the name Magura stands for a mix of company founder Gustav Magenwirth and Urach – you can always see the broadest diversification. There is the control lever, which with its saw rack also established the company logo and is still used today in mowers and other equipment. In addition to the large area of hydraulics with clutches, brake technology, grips and handlebars, bicycle components have established themselves as a steadily growing market worldwide. In addition, vintage car parts are reproduced: We have already forgotten that the VW Beetle was on the road in 1960 with a Magura fuel gauge?
Maybe something like this only works for family-owned companies, coupled with the harsh barreness of the Swabian Alb. There, the stones grow from the farmland rather than nutritious potatoes, and that is what shapes them. This is also confirmed by Andreas Vetter, sales manager for the motorcycle division. “We are extremely technology-driven and in love with quality, but maybe not always as sexy compared to our competitors.” So at Magura they are fine-tuning the image: global, modern, sexy and yet rock solid Swabian.
This is also supposed to convey the new logo with fewer jagged points than a stylized “M” and a strong, aggressive shade of yellow. And then, of course, the “hip world” composed by designers and marketing lines has to be implanted deep into the Swabian heads. But do not worry, if you think Magura is losing its original Swabian roots, you just need to listen a little inexperienced at the reception counter in the Bad Urach company headquarters. This is a real experience for people from north of the Neckar.
Jahn
The specialist will recognize it immediately: this box color is used for production for BMW. Friendly ladies assemble fittings in the new factory in Hengen. For Andreas Vetter, a native of Baden and sales manager for the motorcycle division, it is also nice in Swabia.
However, Vetter does not want to be enthusiastic about the flippant formulation of summarizing the break-up as “from pipe bender to high-tech plastic former”. “Composite” is the magic word in Bad Urach, whereas legendary products like the M handlebar are only company history. That leaves room for speculation about what is coming in the near future, and Andreas Vetter smiles quite relaxed. Anyone who wants to survive with “Made in Germany” needs a technological edge. The designers in Bad Urach are definitely not running out of work. A posh, clinically clean assembly plant was built in 2011 on the green meadow in Hengen, a few kilometers from the Bad Urach headquarters. A multi-million dollar commitment to the location with options for more. However, the restructuring also includes manufacturing capacities in Taiwan. According to the Magura people, international competition leaves little room for maneuver in certain areas. Is there at least a German-German love marriage with BMW, after all Magura’s largest single customer? We’ll have to guess for ourselves what happens when medium-sized companies meet large corporations. After all, the relationship has lasted since 1923 with the very first BMW motorcycle. Magura’s entry into the motorcycle business began with a throttle grip for the R 23.
Jahn
The new plant in Hengen has been confidently marking the start since 2011.
But back to Mr. Glaser. His Magura heart hums and pumps. In an inconspicuous building in the middle of town. There it steams, there it rattles, there the punk goes: “24 hours a day, seven days a week – and in terms of operating times, it doesn’t matter whether the machine is in Asia or here,” the division manager proudly proclaims. “We have long-standing employees, our experience is in the details, mold construction, maintenance. In short: This is where all of our knowledge works. ”The following example given by Glaser fits in with this:“ Here we process almost 180 different types of plastic granules, which come directly to the machines through pipelines and are processed with a wide variety of parameters such as pressure, temperature and time. “He picks up a heated grip. An inconspicuous component that requires highly complex production for a perfect interplay of form and function. “In the injection molding process, we first manufacture the hard throttle grip sleeve, insert the heating wires semi-automatically, and then apply the actual rubber grip as a soft component in the injection molding process,” Glaser quickly sums up. The result is a handle that lies compactly in the hand, which ensures that your fingers are cozy and warm not only on the BMW S 1000 RR high-speed tiller but also on countless snow blowers in North America.
Magura in numbers:
Magura, as well as other companies of the Magura group, belongs to the holding company of Munz-Magenwirth Beteiligungs GmbH. In addition to the traditional main plant in Bad Urach, there is a new assembly plant in Hengen and the plastics technology division in Hulben. Magura has subsidiaries in the USA and Taiwan. In 2011 the turnover was 64 million euros, generated by 400 employees. Magura has been manufacturing motorcycle components since 1923 and has acquired a total of 400 patents.
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