The Move to Munzingen
Finally, more room! Room to grow. Room to develop. In 1969, KNF leaves its small quarters on Habsburgerstrasse in Freiburg’s city center and moves to the green fields of Munzingen. The town has already been advertising the marshland on its eastern border for commercial use for a while. Surrounded by fields, wild pheasants and other scenes of nature, KNF is one of the first companies to settle in that area. “I first had to look up where Munzingen even was. It was essentially just one road with a few curves. So I decided to check it out and cycled through on my way to the swimming pool in Breisach,” Alexander Gagg remembers with a smile.
The business park “Kleine Roos” has to be drained before anything can be built on that land. But the price is unbeatable: 0.70 Deutsche Mark per square meter. Erich Becker also has to negotiate with the landowners before KNF can start construction. “I had to purchase every single parcel of land individually from the farmers,” he recalls. On October 10, 1968, he and all of the landowners gather at the town hall for the official apportionment of the building site. Then, the real work can begin.
The plan is to construct two building wings that merge in the middle. The shop floor has a modular design that can be expanded in all directions, and the administrative wing is to be built onto it.
KNF has about 25 employees when the company relocates to Munzingen. While the old machinery is also brought to Munzingen, the new location undergoes rapid changes in the years that follow. KNF continuously upgrades its production technology to meet growing requirements and increasing production numbers, and to make sure the company stays one step ahead of the competition. The last simple lathes brought over from Habsburgerstrasse gradually disappear, making way for more modern machinery.
Heinz Riedlinger, director of the engineering office and Prokurist (authorized signatory) from 1966 until his retirement in 2002, helps shape this technical progress at KNF. “He was already doing incredible things back then,” Erich Becker reminisces. “And he also grew from them. We all grew from these challenges – we had to.”
After the move to Munzingen, the company reaches one milestone after the other. The new testing laboratory gives rise to molded diaphragm pumps, followed by the first reciprocating compressors. Heated diaphragm pumps, double diaphragm pumps, chemically resistant pumps and laboratory pump systems all debut to the world. Affiliates and representative offices crop up all around the globe.
When KNF celebrates its 50th anniversary in 1996, it has grown to 280 employees and has become a world market leader.
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