50 years ago: Our first own company building
The story of Praher began, entirely appropriately, as a start-up in Ludwig Praher´s garage. His garden had to serve as a temporary storage area for materials and goods and the pool could not be used during the day because the injection moulding equipment was cooled in it. After the garage had been enlarged once, the time for a company building of its own had come.
50 years ago, the groundbreaking ceremony for the first company building in Schwertberg took place, including a transformer station for a reliable power supply. The new building, which initially housed four machines and five employees, covered 500m². With this new production hall and the 3,340m² plot of land, it was thought that there was enough space for all time. However, only ten years later, the neighbouring property, which was twice as large, was also acquired.
The garage is history: in 1973, Praher moves into the first building constructed by the company in the Poneggen district of Schwertberg.
Praher´s first mass-produced item is the bucket for pickled herrings, also known as rollmops.
Initially, only contract manufacturing products came off the production line at Praher. A one-litre bucket with a lid for the pickled herrings of a Styrian food manufacturer, nylon sockets for assembling furniture and plastic cases for miniature cassettes were among Praher’s first products.
With ornamental hub caps for the first VW Golf and the radiator grille of the Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart, Praher also produced for customers from the automotive industry.
As the 1970s drew to a close, Ludwig Praher began to work on optimising the ball valve on his own, parallel to the contract manufacturing of six-way valves, ski bindings, T-bars for drag lifts and many other plastic items.
At that time, “single union” ball valves, which could only be screwed on one side, were still usual. With the double union valve with two threads, designed for pipes with an outside diameter of 50 millimetres and a flow of 40 millimetres, the first product in Praher’s own range was born: the S1 ball valve, whose successors are known as the S4 ball valve and the M1 ball valve today. Initially, the new PVC ball valve was used for swimming pools. A little later, farms with liquid feed systems and the first companies in the chemical industry and the electroplating sector also stocked up on the product.
Sales figures for the S1 were good, with Praher only having to buy the rubber sealing rings from an outside supplier. Everything else – body, nut, shaft, ball, handle and thrust collar – was made on site.
The first ball valve: with a nominal diameter of 40 millimetres it fits pipes with an outside diameter of 50 millimetres.