Lindlar “You shouldn’t look directly in there now,” warns Dirk Köntje. The four orbital welding devices throw a glaring bright light into the production hall in Lindlar, 30 kilometers east of Cologne. Under his protective mask, Köntje’s employee observes how the pipes are welded into the large pipe plate. The process itself runs automatically. A song by the Berlin reggae band “Seeed” sounds from a jukebox behind the men.
Here, in the town of Lindlar, with a population of 21,000, Köntje’s company Albrecht produces containers, primarily for the chemical, filter construction and medical technology sectors. In a second local production hall, Albrecht makes sheet metal blanks for customers and for his own container construction.
With its 388-year tradition, Albrecht is one of the oldest family businesses in Germany. The company is still family-owned in the 14th generation. Anne Köntje and her husband Dirk have been running the company for 16 years and have found their recipe for resilience: preserve values, find your own solutions, act agilely.
The tube plate with welded tubes is part of one of Albrecht’s bestsellers: the heat exchanger. The devices that can be used to transfer heat and cold from one substance to another are manufactured in various sizes. The process is particularly relevant in the chemical industry.
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Albrecht has already experienced a number of crises and wars, and the company is also mastering the current one. According to Dirk Köntje, the availability of steel was severely restricted at times due to the war in Ukraine. Previously, primary materials such as scrap had mostly come from Russia and the Ukraine. The shortage also influenced company policy: “Where possible, we packed liquidity into the warehouse at the beginning of the crisis in order to remain able to deliver,” says Köntje.
However, inflation was more noticeable: “Stainless steel experienced an incredible upward rally in the spring,” he says. The trend is now in the opposite direction. Unlike many industrial companies, the traditional company currently has no energy problems, gas consumption is low and the contract terms are still comparatively long.
Broad product portfolio increases resilience
During the crisis, the current generation also benefited from the fact that Albrecht always produces different products. There is no series production in container construction. Such changes are “very challenging”, says Anne Köntje. “But during the crisis I understood that it is a blessing to be able to supply different products for different industries.” A slump in one industry can be compensated for by orders in another.
Albrecht is above average agile for his age. The family business has a bestseller with heat exchangers in different shapes and sizes. But Dirk Köntje emphasizes: “Our product is our manufacturing capabilities, which we make available.”
The pandemic also put a strain on the Albrecht employees, says Anne Köntje. The company switched to shift work. For some, these changed working hours and processes were exhausting. Other employees would not have felt like working from home from the start. As a mother, she also kept an eye on the employees with children and listened to their wishes as to how they could best cope with the work. Finding your own way is typical for family businesses, says Köntje.
The owners run the container builder Albrecht in the 14th generation.
(Photo: Matthias Witty)
Albrecht is an example of how an old company can achieve modern change – despite the responsibility that comes with a centuries-old tradition. Although the company dates back to the Baroque period, automation and digitization have long since found their way into Albrecht.
Around the turn of the millennium, when the couple married, Albrecht had 30 employees – now there are around 130. More than ten percent of the employees are trainees, and the company generates growth through training.
In the years 2018 to 2020, Albrecht achieved a gross profit of around 24.5 million euros – including the Corona dent. The cheapest blanks from sheet metal processing cost less than 100 euros, but sometimes up to half a million euros are due for larger containers. Albrecht’s production has been in Lindlar for 34 years. The traditional company got its start in today’s Thuringia.
Founded in Thuringia, restarted in North Rhine-Westphalia
The company was founded in 1634 in Ohrdruf, 35 kilometers from Erfurt, by Tobias Albrecht. His work was called “Albrechtshammer”. But the first name of the company founder also became relevant for Ohrdruf: Albrecht bought a sickle and iron hammer near the town. The forge was first driven by a water wheel, later by a mill, and revolutionized the craft. The hammer was soon named after the company founder: the device is still called the “Tobias hammer” to this day.
Today there is a museum there. Albrecht remained in Thuringia for more than 300 years, then the new start in the west followed. In 1935 Georg Albrecht-Früh became managing director together with his mother. Four years later, at the age of 21, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and became a prisoner of war.
After the New Year of 1950, the company was expropriated. Albrecht-Früh reported in a letter that he had been threatened with arrest in Ohrdruf on flimsy grounds, after which he fled west on a motorbike. A little later, “the entire family property was forcibly expropriated,” said Albrecht.
In the West, Georg Albrecht-Früh set up his own business as a master coppersmith from 1952. In the early 1960s, construction of a workshop and a residential building began in Hoffnungsthal. Among other things, the workshop was equipped with a first plasma torch. However, there was dissatisfaction with the noise of the production in the neighboring, growing residential area. In the 1980s, Albrecht-Früh therefore decided to move to Lindlar.
In 1998, at the age of 78, Früh invested one million Deutschmarks in the company’s first laser cutting system. This technology was still relatively uncommon in German industry at the time. In the same year, his daughter Anne Köntje took over the management of Albrecht after her studies.
Her husband Dirk followed in 2000. In 2006 Albrecht-Früh passed the company on to the next generation. Anne Köntje has four siblings, but none of them wanted to take over the company. “If we hadn’t done it, the company would have been sold or closed,” says Dirk Köntje in retrospect. Georg Albrecht-Früh died on July 27 of this year at the age of 103. The company states on its website that it wants to “continue his life’s work in his spirit”.
The new laser tower runs “unmanned” and the boss poses with the YouTube stars
The reference to one’s own tradition does not exclude new paths. This is especially noticeable in the second hall, where blanks are made. While about five orders per week are received in container construction, which are processed for between several months and a year, the blanks are manufactured much faster. For a surcharge, Albrecht offers the service of executing orders within 24 hours. On average, the orders are completed within a week, with almost 30 new orders coming in every day. And everything has been digitized.
Alexander Caspari, area manager for sheet metal processing at Albrecht, proudly shows one of the PC terminals on which every work step is entered and everything is documented.
A look into the new, black laser tower: through a pane of glass, Caspari observes how the plasma cutter works itself through a large sheet of metal. The overview on the adjacent screen shows the pattern according to which the sheet metal is cut.
The laser arm works its way through the sheet metal quickly and with millimeter precision. “It runs unmanned,” explains Caspari. This means that operations can continue at night or on weekends. If the machine comes to an unscheduled standstill, the operator receives a notification via SMS and has to come over to check the cause.
The oldest family companies in Germany
This high degree of automation is not a matter of course in the industry. The managing couple embraced new trends early on. Dirk Köntje, short, black hair, white shirt, gray jeans, white sneakers, would also look good in a start-up in Silicon Valley.
Dirk Köntje poses on the website next to Johannes Mickenberger from the YouTube celebs “The Real Life Guys”, who collect millions of clicks with “Do it yourself” videos about technical challenges. The “Real Life Guys” are Albrecht customers themselves – and Mickenberger also promotes the company’s training.
Part of the success can also be explained by long-term customer relationships and agile management: The company Dosch from Berlin has been buying measuring devices from Albrecht every week for a quarter of a century. There is also a major order for Saudi Arabia. Cost point: 300,000 euros.
Dosch appreciates the innovative spirit, they also share the same values: “Quality, honesty and future orientation”. Both companies are “orientated towards the fact that our companies will still exist in 50 years”. Even Albrecht does not draw large amounts of capital from the company and does not try to maximize profits. According to Dosch, the company appreciates a relationship based on partnership with customers and suppliers. “Especially in times of crisis like this, that’s important.”
Anne Köntje describes the joint leadership as a married couple positively: “We are totally different. He’s analytical and a numbers person, I’m very people-oriented.” Management isn’t free of conflict: “Of course, there’s a bang every now and then.” And it’s exhausting to take company problems home or on vacation.
But she couldn’t imagine anything nicer than joint leadership. She also prefers to invest the company’s surplus in new machines, says Anne Köntje, than in a holiday home on Mallorca.
More: The secret of resilience: What can be learned from the oldest companies in Germany.