Surface specialists from Kerpen

The AHC group’s main plant AHC was founded by Ulrich Reininghaus and Herbert Friebe in Cologne-Mülheim in 1960. It took months for the first orders to come in, but then things started to take off for the company. A new, spaciously designed production site was needed and it was located in Kerpen in the Rhineland. Since then, the Kerpen plant has been regarded as the AHC main plant and at that time was joined by the administration, EDP, research and development and plant design. Today, the Kerpen plant has 115 employees and coats technical components for around 2,700 active clients, primarily in the mechanical engineering and automotive industries. Standard processes are hard anodising (HART-COAT®) and electroless nickel (DURNI-COAT®). Special features of the Kerpen plant are the SILA-COAT ® 5000 process, an anodic dip coating to increase alkali resistance, and the HC large part unit (HC-GTA). Work is done on five days of the week in 3 shifts with Saturday as a back-up day. Three apprentices are accepted per year, of which two work in surface coating and one for example, in the workshop or shipping. In the past, the components to be coated came more from mechanical engineering but now the trend is more towards the automotive industry. Nevertheless, 60% of turnover is still generated from mechanical engineering and 40% from the automotive sector.

For more information on Surface specialists from Kerpen talk to Aalberts Surface Treatment