In 2021, Igus is supplying customers all over the world with its lubrication- and maintenance-free "Motion Plastics". To mark the 90th birthday of the founding couple, the company is bringing the garage back to life.

When Günter Blase drives to Igus on his 90th birthday, as he does on many days of the year, the company founder can currently see the construction progress of the new company building on the B8. The new building is being constructed next to the headquarters in Cologne Porz-Lind, visible from afar thanks to the striking yellow pylons. Igus develops and produces high-performance plastics for moving applications here. The tribopolymers make moving parts all over the world lubrication-free, quiet and light - in theater stages, mountain bikes or office furniture, as well as in offshore drilling platforms, crane systems, ships and space rockets.

However, in 1965, one year after the company was founded, this was not yet in the cards when the first Motion Plastics were created in a 55 square meter garage in Cologne-Mühlheim. Günter Blase had recognized the potential of plastic early on and how injection moulding could streamline the industry. After eight years of permanent employment in a company in the plastics industry, he decided to set up his own business. His wife Margret, who also celebrated her 90th birthday in April this year, supported this idea. As a self-employed tax consultant, she also took over the accounting and finances of the new company, while Günter Blase focused on production. For six years, Igus produced out of this garage as a pure contract manufacturer for a small number of industrial customers.

"We must always be prepared for minus 50 and plus 50 percent"

56 years later, a replica of this very garage stands in front of the 90,000 square meter Igus factory campus designed by architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw in 1994 to mark the 90th birthday of the founding couple. Some of the milestones in the company's history can be seen inside the replica, such as the first injection molding machine. Much has changed since then: the portfolio now includes 200,000 parts from stock and ranges from energy chain systems that can be calculated online with a guarantee to intelligent 3D-printed special parts and robotic components for a low-cost entry into automation.

Every day, more than 4,500 employees in 35 Igus branches worldwide ensure that customers can improve their technology and save costs. To this day, Igus takes one of Günter Blase's maxims to heart, and it is more relevant than ever: "We must always be prepared for minus 50 and plus 50 percent". And so the early expansion of machine and raw material storage capacities during the pandemic is currently still ensuring comparatively fast delivery times in a phase of rapid economic recovery. The new factory building is intended to drive this development forward in the future. A project that Günter Blase, an architecture enthusiast, is still actively involved in today.