| Type | Public (Swiss Stock Exchange: SUN) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1834 |
| Headquarters | Winterthur, Switzerland |
| Key people | Ton Büchner, CEO |
| Industry | Industrial engineering and manufacturing |
| Products | Pumps, surface technologies, chemical industry, thermal turbomachinery |
| Revenue |  3.537 Billion CHF (2007) |
| Employees | 11,599 [1] |
| Website | www.sulzer.com |
Sulzer Ltd. is a Swiss industrial engineering and manufacturing firm established as Sulzer Brothers Ltd. in 1834 in Winterthur, Switzerland. Today it is a publicly owned company with international subsidiaries. The company's shares are listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange.
Sulzer Brothers helped develop shuttleless weaving, and their core business was loom manufacture. Rudolf Diesel worked for Sulzer in 1879, and in 1893 Sulzer bought certain rights to diesel engines. Sulzer built their first diesel engine in 1898.
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World War II
Sulzer was blacklisted by the Allies during World War II due to an increase in trade with Nazi Germany. Sulzer refused to sign an agreement to limit the future sale of marine diesel engines to the Axis countries and was blacklisted by the Allies as a result.
Rail traction
Sulzer developed a series of rail traction engines in the 1930's and 1940's which were used extensively in diesel locomotives in the UK, Europe and South America. A small number were used in locomotives in South Africa and Australia [2]. Several experimental diesels were built in the US. The Sulzer LDA (prefixed by the number of cylinders, with the number after the LDA being related to the cylinder bore) engine was widely used by British Rail many of them built under licence by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow, as 6, 8 and 12 cylinder engines. A 12 cylinder engine was used in the British Rail Class 47 and several other classes. The 12LDA28 engine was a double bank engine rather like two six cylinder engines side by side rather than a V type as favoured by many other manufacturers. Sulzer V type engines for rail use bore the type number LVA (with a 50 degree angle between the banks) [3]
New Sulzer Diesel
In 1990 Sulzer spun off the diesel engine division into a separate company named "New Sulzer Diesel" (NSD) and sold the majority of New Sulzer Diesel's shares, retaining only a minority ownership in the company. In 1997 NSD was absorbed by Wärtsilä, which created Wärtsilä NSD. Wärtsilä NSD is the maker of the world's largest diesel engine, Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C.
Organisation
The company is divided in four main divisions:
- Sulzer Pumps - Pumping systems, 49% of the revenue and 5686 employees.[1] It produces centrifugal pumps and agitators/mixers for the Oil, Hydrocarbon, Paper, Power Generation, Water, Food, Metals and Fertilizer industries at a global scale.
- Sulzer Metco - Services and products for thermal spray and thin film surface technologies, 21.3% of revenue with 2054 employees.[1]
- Sulzer Chemtech - Components and services for separation columns and static mixing, 21.5% of the revenue and 2393 employees.[1]
- Sulzer Turbo Services - Service and repair of thermal turbomachinery. Also manufactures spares for gas turbines, steam turbines, and compressors. 7.9% of revenue with 1179 employees.[1]
Sulzer also operates Innotec, a small R&D division.
References
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sulzer engines |
- ^ a b c d e End of December 2007. Taken from Sulzer 'Company Profile 2008'.
- ^ http://nicdoncaster.com/rail/sulzer.htm
- ^ http://www.derbysulzers.com/sulzerengine.html
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