THE CHRIWA STORY
The origin of CHRIWA goes back to the year 1973. With a promising business idea and no little courage, it was then that the company's founder, Peter Christiansen, a young and highly motivated engineer, left his secure job and braved the path to going it alone. With one full-time and one part-time staff members in a 3-room appartment in the town of Celle, Lower Saxony, Germany, the partnership Peter Christiansen Wasser-Aufbereitungstechnik was Peter Christiansen in his first office first founded.
It took just under three months of resilience until the first customer placed its faith in the new company, giving it its first system order worth what is today a relatively small sum of 200,000 Deutschmarks (around € 100,000).
Initially only entrusted with basic engineering tasks in project planning and order processing, worked to more than its full capacity, and with growing order volumes, Peter Christiansen Wasser-Aufbereitungstechnik was increasingly confronted with questions and assignments on site at the customer's. As a result of these requirements, the first assembly/service team was soon set up to improve flexibility and for better reproducibility of solutions to similar problems.
This development consequently required a workshop in order to prepare field workers, as well as additional engineers and technical designers. The company administration, with its first functions, was now installed, too. To meet these new requirements, the company acquired its own premises in a mixed industrial estate in Westercelle in 1975.
In the years that followed, the structure of orders continued to change. Whilst there was a focus on well, drinking and process water treatment at the beginning, the treatment of beverage water now took up a greater share of order volumes. Bathing water, condensate, boiler feed and industrial water treatment rounded off the company's range of services offered at the time. Together with this change in the types of jobs, the size of constructions continued to grow, meaning that in just a few years spatial capacities at the company, which was still young, were exhausted. In addition, rising material flows and the increased requirement for covered and open storage space necessitated a move to a purely industrial zone.
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The first Chriwa installations: A water treatment system for soft drink and mineral water in Libya.
After exploring possible alternatives, the company management decided to concentrate the company, which had become well established in the market in the meantime, more heavily on its own production. In 1980 the name was changed to Chriwa Wasser- Aufbereitungstechnik GmbH and the company was thus converted into a limited liability company. Furthermore, the procurement of the company's own real estate and the construction of company buildings was concluded.
Owing to the attachment to the Celle region, land was purchased in neighbouring Hambühren following an intensive search. In 1983, shortly after the firm's 10-year anniversary, newly erected office space and the first warehousing and production halls were acquired.
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The Chriwa premises in Hambühren in 1983.
The success of the first ten years was built on technical expertise, which was connected with high standards in safety and implementation. Buoyed by this success, production depth was expanded with the inclusion of a container production facility. Today containers with a diameter of up to six metres can be produced at the Hambühren location, where there is a focus on the production of high-quality stainless-steel containers.
L:\Marketing\Homepage\Firmengeschichte\Unternehmensdarstellung\Homepage_Jungr ad\Unternehmensdarstellung bis 2018_EN(UK).doc From 1985, with the appointment of new engineering and sales staff, additional processes were introduced and additional markets were created. Foreign assignments, which had thus far been sporadic and based on the company management's personal contacts, especially in Arabia, were aggressively expanded throughout the entire MENA region thanks to cooperation with sales partners and the establishment of the company's own export sales department.
This continuously progressing expansion now also presented the company with greater requirements in terms of organisation and internal processes. For the strongly growing company's organisation and communication that had existed previously, binding and transparent rules and instructions were laid out for all the company's employees. In addition, the expanded operational functions of material management, production, purchasing and commercial management demanded new and quicker processes and control mechanisms.
To this end PC technology was introduced as early as 1987 for efficient working. Through the interlinking of personalised solutions tailored to the company, a powerful, integrated data processing system was set up which lasts to this day. It was in the engineering office where the most alarming change took place in the use of new data technologies; with the development from CAD to 3D design, through to opportunities for simulation and animation common today.
In the meantime data and control system technology had also found their way into Chriwa systems. What were once manually controlled system models were not upgraded to innovative, semi or fully automatic installations with continuously increasing requirements in terms of measurement, testing and control electronics – which of course brought other challenges with them for Chriwa. Today it goes without saying that Chriwa collaborates with the world's leading suppliers of control and measurement technology and contributes its own ideas to the further development of supplier products.
From 1989 onwards a new surge in growth set in for the company with the opening up of the Eastern European markets. The expansion of large international beverage producers in these markets brought Chriwa – which had since become firmly established for the firms involved there – a new new boost in development. This lead to a gradual increase in spatial capacity between 1989 and 1995. The core element of this was to become a modern production and assembly hall of some 2,000 m3 of floor space.
In this hall a high standard of quality in production was ensured through the separation of black and stainless-steel production, separated formed part construction, separate chipping and sawing devices, as well as sealed off sections for aluminium blasting work, steel coating and surface treatment of high-grade steels.
In order to develop a long-term sales base for the company, which had continued to grow strongly, the sales department, which had thus far solely dealt with customer requests, was upgraded with respect to stronger market cultivation and made more dynamic in terms of its external impact.
In 1993 sales offices were founded in Eastern and Southern Germany and, as of now, representations have been set up in Africa, Asia, Central America, South America, the Middle-East and in Eastern Europe, as well as sales subsidiary companies in Serbia and Spain.
As a special business division, the electronics department has been supplying its own software in heavily expanding volumes since 1994. This software is for process displays, which have been designed system-specifically, of operational and measurement data, including data logging and screen monitoring, all the way through to remote maintenance. As early as 1999 a total solution for operational data gathering and display was realised, from the well through to shipping the finished product to the customer.
L:\Marketing\Homepage\Firmengeschichte\Unternehmensdarstellung\Homepage_Jungr ad\Unternehmensdarstellung bis 2018_EN(UK).doc For the special issue of contaminated site and pollutant clean-up, as well as waste water treatment, the subsidiary company CUSS- CHRIWA Umwelt- Systemtechnik und Service GmbH was founded in 1980, and was at that time housed at the same location in Hambühren. Today CUSS predominantly builds waste water treatment systems for large- scale industry. System sizes of several million euros in value are the norm.
Pollutant clean-up from CUSS CUSS waste water treatment systems
Due to their operational size, CUSS waste water systems represent special, tailored applications for the customer. To round off the product range in the standard applications of waste water technology, the sister companies System S & P and Dr. Scholz und Partner were integrated into the Chriwa group in the year 2000. System S & P/Dr. Scholz und Partner supply series-standard systems around the world for small municipalities, hotels, camp sites, etc. according to the rotating immersion disk process.
S&P/Dr. Scholz und Partner compact waste water systems Bathing water treatment
To strengthen membrane process technology, a majority stake in UWATECH Membran-, Umwelt- und Wassertechnik was acquired around the same time. The company handles chemically complex tasks using all recognised membrane techniques. Due to the heavy incorporation of membrane technology into the Chriwa product range, by the year 2005 UWATECH had become fully integrated into Chriwa, and its status as an independent business was given up.
Together with its partner company AWG, Chriwa has been developing chlorine electrolysis systems as a component for its complete units since around 2005. These chlorine electrolysis systems stand out due to their many advantages over products that are openly available on the market. Today deliveries of systems from Chriwa and its subsidiary and partner companies go to many regions of the world. Central and South America and individual regions of Africa in particular developed very favourably for Chriwa from the year 2007, meaning the impact of the global economic crisis barely registered.
L:\Marketing\Homepage\Firmengeschichte\Unternehmensdarstellung\Homepage_Jungr ad\Unternehmensdarstellung bis 2018_EN(UK).doc The further development of the group is heavily based on the desire for a continuous process of regeneration and adaptation, which is closely connected to the technological requirements of the customers and to developments in international competition.
Today these developments predominantly concern measures for reducing operating costs. This especially includes water and energy, but also includes avoiding labour or disposal costs. There are numerous processes and applications available based on physical, biological and chemical technologies. A high degree of engineering potential in the areas of process and construction technology as well as machine construction also guarantees the best quality in system construction. In order for the company to satisfy the latest quality-related standards in line with the increase in its capabilities, Chriwa's company management set up a quality management system in accordance with the international standard DIN EN ISO 9001 at an early stage and had it certified by a recognised company. This QM system annually goes through monitoring routines that are closely designed around customer requirements and is today one of the most important control instruments. In addition, Chriwa and its systems and applications satisfy the requirements laid out in the German Federal Water Act or (WHG) and the company possesses all the certificates required for providing services, from pressure container tests and various welding certificates through to forklift driving licences and transport safety certificates.
Large drinking water treatment system in Saudi Arabia, 50,000 m³/d
The consistent development of the Chriwa business activity into what has now grown into a group of companies required additional investments. In the year 2004 office space capacity was increased by 30%, and in the years 2008/2009 the hall capacity was nearly doubled by the new construction of two assembly and warehouse halls with a working area of 3,000 m2. The advantages of this are a significantly quicker production run and the possibility of being able to identify and monitor every incoming part from suppliers, through our own production up to the finished system package, when in shipment and at the customer's premises.
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The Chriwa premises in Hambühren in 2009.
The sister and partner companies Cuss and AWG, which have grown considerably since their foundation, obtained office and warehousing buildings specially tailored to their requirements in 2008 and 2013 respectively. Modern data technology solutions enable seamless cooperation between the locations.
In order to be able to concentrate even more closely on the increasing quality demands of our customers, the container production was split off into an independent production company called FaProTec (Fabrik für Prozesstechnik, or "factory for process technology"). To this end a production hall nearly 3,000 m2 in size was erected in 2010/2011 and completed at the beginning of 2012. Modern machinery and manufacturing equipment was installed in parallel with the move. In addition to a comprehensive enhancement to material processing workflows and the process depth, high-quality and more economical production is also enabled.
As part of the relocation of container production, the capacity of system pre-assembly was able to be increased once more by some 30% with approx. 1,200 m2. With this development of bigger assembly areas a significant benefit to cycle times especially for bigger plants was achieved.
By the end of the year 2012, Chriwa had obtained the largest single order in its company history in Latin America, which it successfully completed by the middle of 2014.
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Chriwa headquarters in Hambühren 2018
Today there are some 200 people working for Chriwa directly or indirectly day in, day out. With an 8% share of trainees to total workforce, the companies of the Chriwa group take their responsibility toward the next generation and its contribution to society very seriously indeed. As a result, investment is made in the further training and qualifications of employees. Low staff turnover and joint sporting activities in several company sports groups demonstrate that staff identify with the company and feel happy both at work and outside it. It is from this that they draw the strength and dedication to give their absolute all for the customer and the product.
Hambühren, June 2019
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