50 Years of Putzmeister – A Pioneer Celebrates Technological History

With above-average growth for many years, consolidated sales of over a billion Euros (1.5 billion US $ in 2007) and nearly 4,000 employees, the Putzmeister Group (PM) is today one of the most successful and innovative German construction machinery manufacturers. 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.
The company for developing and assembling plastering machines, which was founded in 1958 in Karl Schlecht's father's garage, is today, with over 20 subsidiaries world-wide, 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.
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. To enable flexible use, Putzmeister 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 m³/h. On the occasion of its 50 year 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. Putzmeister has again set a world record and a further milestone in the history of technology.
On large construction sites, Putzmeister concrete pumps are often found in a stationary version. 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 2008. 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, etc.
In addition to their many world records, Putzmeister machines have also rewritten technical history many times over through pioneering innovations and spectacular deployments. Take, for example, the pioneering work in developing large truck-mounted concrete pumps with flexible 5 and even 6 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. For construction of the Euro 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 2-component mortar.