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A 35-year industrial adventure with a solid future
In 1988, Busch published an ad in the newspaper: it was actively seeking a “pioneer in composite materials”. A few months later, having found the perfect person, the company began producing the very first vanes for its vacuum pumps in a brand-new unit at its Chevenez production site in northwestern Switzerland.
Alain Lallemand, then the site operations manager, recalls: “The idea of Dr Karl Busch, the group’s boss at the time, was to master composite materials solely to be able to produce the pump vanes in-house.” Alain, now the deputy director of Composites Busch continues: “We quickly reached our cruising speed. Everything was in place, and things were going well. As I’m creative by nature, I started doing a few tests…”
At that time, the company only manufactured flat parts, the aforementioned pump vanes. Curious to see how composite materials would behave in different forms, the teams at the time carried out a test on a Teflon pipe filled with carbon fibre, injected and heated. This is how the first evolution of Composites Busch was born: a carbon bike handlebar named “Barflex”. Thanks to this new product, news of the company’s skills with composite technologies began to spread, slowly but surely.
Media coverage of this first invention reached the ears of officials at the local ice hockey club, who came up with a wild idea: what if one-piece ice hockey sticks could be made from composite materials to replace wooden sticks, which were too brittle when used in high-level sport? At the same time, buoyed by these different possibilities, the company began to conquer the Medtech world with its first carbon prosthesis under the name “Busch Energy”.
But it was the hockey sticks that made Composites Busch’s global reputation a few months later. After many tests, developers and production managers at the Swiss company managed to convince the highest-profile players to use their sticks. First North America and then the whole world was won over by the skill and expertise of the Swiss company.
More than 25 years of industrial innovation and success would follow, placing Composites Busch at the forefront of the composite materials world. “We made more than 20,000 hockey sticks a year! Half of our production space was given over to manufacturing them,” recalls Alain Lallemand. “As well as being our flagship product, the production of these hockey sticks was a fantastic laboratory for gaining even greater mastery of what can be done with composite materials.”
In 2018, due to economic reasons and market saturation, Composites Busch decided to discontinue the production of hockey sticks and diversify its activities more intensively. Medtech, watchmaking, luxury goods, aviation and engineering became an integral part of the company’s production targets. Having moved to Porrentruy in 1998 and experienced unparalleled expansion, Composites Busch is now ready to face the challenges of the future.
“I’m convinced there is still a lot to be done in the field of composite materials!” declares Alain Lallemand. The deputy director concludes: “Composites Busch is fortunate to be able to draw on such a strong history and incredible experience, gained through a relatively short but extremely intense industrial adventure. Our challenge now is to sustain this legacy and keep writing our beautiful story.”
Vibrant materials, a lively company, innovative projects.
A Company of the Group
Quality Management System certified according to: ISO9001:2015, ISO13485:2016 and EN9100:2018
