40 years ELGO Electronic

With a ceremony for customers and companions, an eventful anniversary year has come to an end for ELGO Electronic. Founded 40 years ago by owner and CEO Helmut Grimm, the company has developed into a global player for magnetic measurement and positioning technology. In addition to the location in Rielasingen, two other companies now belong to the ELGO Group: ELGO Batscale AG in Balzers in the Principality of Liechtenstein, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, and, since the beginning of the year, the Swiss company EPH in Diessenhofen. With further subsidiaries in the Czech Republic, USA, China and Japan, the ELGO Group has more than 250 employees worldwide.

Founded in 1978 by electronics engineer Helmut Grimm in Rielasingen, Germany, the company concentrated in its early years on the development and manufacture of electronic counters with LED displays - a world first at the time - and automatic positioning systems. With these products, ELGO quickly made a name for itself among manufacturers of woodworking and sheet metal working machines worldwide. By entering the field of magnetic tape-based measurement technology in the 1990s, ELGO succeeded in opening up new customer groups and expanding its growth. In many production processes where exact and reliable position detection is essential, these systems, consisting of magnetically encoded plastic tape and sensor, replaced conventional rotary encoders for position and displacement detection. The magnetic tapes have been manufactured at ELGO Batscale in Liechtenstein since 1988. Up to 3.5 million meters of magnetic tape leave the production facilities every year in order to be used as a benchmark in a wide variety of applications.
The areas of application for these magnetic tape measuring systems are very broad and range from recording the angle of rotation of solar panels in large solar fields to systems for determining the position in medical devices, such as computer tomographs, to applications in the field of mobile automation. ELGO is particularly proud of its success in the lift industry. More than 150,000 lift systems in the world's tallest and most renowned buildings use the technology from Rielasingen and Balzers to ensure that people reach the desired floor safely and reliably. In the course of global urbanization and the emergence of megacities with over 10 million inhabitants, the company expects further growth in this area, especially as major elevator manufacturers such as Schindler and Thyssenkrupp Elevator are among its customers.
ELGO is well prepared for growth. At the Rielasingen location, the production area has been considerably expanded this year with the construction of a new hall. On two fully automated assembly lines, sensors can be efficiently manufactured in large series. At the same time, 1,000 square meters of space are available for the manufacture of customer-specific systems and small series. The core competence of the Diessenhofen location is services in the field of electronic assemblies, such as the assembly of printed circuit boards and the assembly of mechanical components.
The training of junior staff is particularly important to ELGO. The company has been a training company for 30 years. 175 young people have started their professional careers during this time with an apprenticeship or a dual course of study. Today's management team therefore includes a number of manager who started their training at ELGO.
The successors for the management of the family business are already in sight. The two sons Felix and Moritz Grimm have been successfully involved in the management for several years. Felix Grimm as commercial manager and Moritz Grimm as technical engineer.