100 years in Wurzen – a Saxony success story.

As the direct predecessor to the present GEA Air Treatment Production GmbH the engineering company "Apparatebau Juwil“  was founded by Julius Wilisch a hundred years ago and started producing industrial air filters. In 1912 the plant was initially manufacturing only air filters under its own patents, especially for compressed air, plate filters and disk filters for piston machines. With the addition of further production halls the range was expanded to include the manufacture of fresh-air and waste-air filters. The filter factory in Saxony continued to expand, became a state-owned factory in 1959 and produced filters for just about every industrial application during the German Democratic Republic.

In 1965 the company began to specialise in filters to remove dust from atmospheric air. Even at the time these filters were very popular and successful: With 125 employees the turnover tripled in only four years. The facility demonstrated its flexibility in 1970, when it was integrated into the Dresden ILKA-Kombinat state combine (Integrated Air and Refrigeration Equipment) and became almost indispensable for the planned economy. For almost two decades the team of employees was the only manufacturer of filters for atmospheric air in the GDR and produced industrial filters of all kinds, including air filters for power stations and electrostatic filters for use in machine tools. Following reunification the company was turned into a limited liability company and became a part of the GEA Group in 1990. A new and decisive outlook started in 1991 with the production start of central air treatment units.

1994 saw the move to new production facilities and an expansion of air treatment equipment manufacture. As the first company of the then GEA AG to achieve certification to DIN EN ISO 9001 in 1994 and also thanks to continuous improvement of the manufacturing processes, production of central air treatment equipment continued to increase in the past years. In 2010 the Wurzen facility was officially named "Center of Excellence" for GEA central air treatment equipment. The product portfolio of GEA central air treatment equipment includes the modular GEA CAIRplus air treatment systems e.g. for hospitals, the models in the GEA CAIR Frico series that were specially developed for indoor swimming pools, and also the complete range of compact models in the GEA COM4 series. In addition customer-specific special applications, for example on offshore drilling rigs, ships or data centers can also be designed and manufactured in close cooperation between our engineering staff and the customer.

Press Relations and Public Affairs:
GEA Heat Exchangers GmbH
Gaby Fildhaut
Dorstener Str. 484 – 44809 Bochum
Germany
Tel.: +49 (0)234 980 2585
press.hx@gea.com
www.gea.com

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