Putzmeister, a pioneering German manufacturer of concrete machinery, which has been involved with some of the leading projects in the region, including the world’s tallest tower, The Burj Dubai, is celebrating 50 years of innovation this year.

“With above-average growth for many years, consolidated sales of over a €1 billion ($1.5 billion) last year and nearly 4,000 employees, the Putzmeister Group (PM) is today one of the most successful and innovative companies, says a spokesman for the company.
“Fifty years ago, nobody could have imagined that a mechanical engineering student would set such benchmarks and change the entire industry with the ideas contained in his diploma thesis,” says the spokesman.
The company for developing and assembling plastering machines, which was founded in 1958 in Karl Schlecht’s father’s garage, has grown to include over 20 subsidiaries world-wide and become one of the leading providers of concrete pumps and booms, mortar pumps and screed conveyors as well as pump and silo systems for industrial high-density solids. Putzmeister’s range of products is rounded off by mobile conveyor belt systems and high-pressure cleaners for professional operators, says the spokesman.
On principle, the Putzmeister founder avoided establishing too great a degree of vertical integration in his works. Instead, he sought collaboration with qualified suppliers, who produced not only individual components, but also entire assemblies for his concrete and mortar pumps, in accordance with Putzmeister specifications. The complete machines were then assembled in the Putzmeister works. The particularly “strategic” components, which were also produced in-house from 1979, included the booms, the load-bearing base structures and the support systems for the Putzmeister truck-mounted concrete pumps. Today, these extremely resilient, brand-specific components are produced using powerful welding robots in the ultramodern machining centres of Putzmeister’s Althengstett (near Calw) and Gründau (near Hanau) works, but also, increasingly, at the Putzmeister sites in Turkey and China.

Two records in a year
Whether in construction above or below ground, on small, private construction sites or for large projects – Putzmeister pumps have been used for decades to apply plastering mortar to outer and inner walls, to pump floor screed and to place concrete accurately in formworks, says the spokesman. To enable flexible use, the company has a wide range of truck-mounted concrete pumps, which can be combined with flexible booms. These machines are designed for pump outputs of up to 200 cu m/h. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the company surprised its customers by presenting a truck-mounted concrete pump with a boom reaching a height of 70 m for the first time, which is a world record and a major milestone.
“On large construction sites, Putzmeister concrete pumps are often found in a stationary version,” says the spokesman. “With these types, long delivery lines connect the pump at the base of the high-rise building to the stationary booms on the upper floors. For such projects, it is crucial that the machines can build up the necessary pressure and that the delivery lines are able to withstand the stress in terms of compressive strength and wear.”
With a concrete pressure of around 200 bar, a Putzmeister super high-pressure pump at the Burj Dubai, the highest building in the world, reached the record delivery height of 606 m in April this year.
Stationary Putzmeister pumps can also be used, however, to deliver concrete over distances of several kilometres, such as during tunnelling work. Before the tunnels are released for drinking water supplies, for sewage systems or for road or rail traffic, other Putzmeister machines and equipment will often have been used, such as concrete wet spraying manipulators, concrete distributors for tunnel formworks, systems for injecting mortar or fine concrete behind tubbings.
In addition to their many world records, Putzmeister machines have also rewritten technical history many times over through pioneering innovations and spectacular deployments. “One example is the pioneering work in developing large truck-mounted concrete pumps with flexible five and even six arm placing booms. In 1986, some of these long-reach boom pumps were specially equipped to withstand radiation and, running in non-stop operation for many months, helped to construct a protective shell of reinforced concrete around the atomic reactor after the accident at Chernobyl,” the spokesman says.
Another major project where the company was involved is the Channel Tunnel (1988-1994). Putzmeister presented two solutions that were given a lot of attention in the industry: the first was a particularly powerful high-density solids pump, which delivered vast quantities of excavation material from the tunnels to a dumpsite. The second was a computer-aided injection and filling system, with which the ring between the tubbing and the surrounding rock mass – accurately metered – was concreted with special two-component mortar.
In the five decades of its existence, Schlecht has consistently restructured the Putzmeister group into individual, largely independent market technology fields, under the umbrella of Putzmeister Holding. With modern production sites close to its markets around the globe, a high equity ratio and continuous employee training, the company founder considers the global Putzmeister Group today to be well prepared for international competition, which now comes more from the Far East than from European markets.