Emhart Glass, one of the leading suppliers of machines, controls, and parts to the glass container industry, celebrates its centenary this year. The company began in 1912, when Hartford-Fairmont was founded in Hartford, CN, USA by Bill Lorenz, William Honiss and Karl Peiler. The company was created to market a design for the paddle-gob feeder, which used gravity to automatically feed molten glass into moulds. In 1924, it became Hartford-Empire and patented the individual section (IS) machine for the automatic production of glass containers. According to the company, the 1940s saw it move into automated inspection. Renaming itself Emhart and later Emhart Glass, the firm built an EU-wide sales and manufacturing operation from the 1950s with plants and branches in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the UK. The acquisition of Swedish manufacturer Sundsvalls Verkstader in 1952 was an important milestone and in 1987, the group transferred its headquarters to Switzerland. "I am very proud to be part of a company with such a long and impressive history," said Martin Jetter, President of Emhart Glass. "Our challenge today is to live up to their legacy by serving our customers with new ways to improve the technologies we've inherited, and to add them with innovations of our own, for the benefit of our customers and the entire glass industry."
