Busch Group’s co-founder and co-owner celebrated his 95th birthday on 20 April 2024. Just before his birthday, Dr Karl Busch traveled to the Netherlands with his wife Ayhan to attend this year’s international Busch Group Manager Meeting.

In over 60 years, the Busch Group has grown to become the second largest vacuum pump manufacturer in the world. It all began as a small two-person company founded by Dr Karl Busch and his wife Ayhan in Schopfheim in 1963.

Engineer and inventor Karl Busch obtained his doctorate in 1960 at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) on the topic of friction and wear in water-lubricated rotary compressors. After that, he first worked at his grandfather Karl Wittig’s company in Schopfheim as a design manager before he and his wife founded Dr.-Ing. Karl Busch GmbH – today, Busch Vacuum Solutions. In 1972, the company moved to Maulburg.

When self-service supermarkets emerged in Germany in the early 1960s, many household-sized foodstuffs had to be packaged in a manner that was both hygienic and visually appealing. Dr Karl Busch developed the first vacuum pump specifically for this application: the HUCKEPACK. This is a particularly compact and robust rotary vane vacuum pump with pump stages arranged one above the other. This technology helped keep foodstuffs fresher for longer. Later, the engineer revolutionized food packaging with the successor product, the R5. This vacuum pump became the industrial standard, and his company became the world market leader in this area – with a market share of over 85 percent.

In April 1971, Busch founded its first overseas subsidiary in the United Kingdom and was the first German industrial company to sign a cooperation agreement for manufacturing in China in 1981. Pfeiffer Vacuum and centrotherm clean solutions have now joined forces with Busch Vacuum Solutions to form the new Busch Group.

www.buschvacuum.com
 

Dr Karl Busch and his family

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