Baselland Business 1/2023 English

Made in

Made in Baselland The competence center for bathroom culture The heart of Swiss bathroom culture beats in Laufen. There “Keramik Laufen AG" and "Similor AG" produce everything that makes friends of well-kept bathrooms happy, as well as kitchen faucets and fittings for the public sector. Reto Anklin Since 1925, almost 100 years already, "Keramik Laufen AG" in Laufen, which was founded in 1898 as "Tonwarenfabrik LAUFEN", has been producing pouring stones and wall basins. In the decades since its foundation, the company has produced almost everything that can be fired from clay: Bricks, clinkers, wall tiles, floor tiles and also insulators for the SBB. Today, "Keramische" as it is called by the people of Laufen, specializes in products for the bathroom. In Laufen, around 320,000 ceramic pieces are produced each year. About 75 percent of these are toilets, 25 percent washbasins, bidets, urinals, trays and accessories. Laufen also produced an innovation that set new standards for the entire sanitary industry. Keramik 38 Baselland Business

Laufen presented the ceramic die casting process that they had been developing for years to the public in October 1982. This process enabled LAUFEN to significantly expand its capacity, efficiency and product range. In 1997, the Group achieved sales of 1 billion Swiss francs and employed around 10,000 people in various production facilities worldwide, including one in Brazil. The rapid growth has its price: In 1997, the Group management initiates a restructuring. In 1999, the Spanish ROCA Group takes over "Keramik Laufen AG". Under the umbrella of one of the world's largest and most influential companies in the bathroom and sanitary industry, the Basel-Landschaft company develops encouragingly. LAUFEN positions itself as a manufacturer of high-quality bathroom furnishings. Cooperation with renowned designers becomes LAUFEN's trademark and recipe for success. As early as 1990, LAUFEN began to focus more on design: "Porsche Design" became LAUFEN's first international cooperation partner. What started with Porsche continues today with designers such as Stefano Giovannoni, Ludovica and Roberto Palomba, and Peter Wirz. The noble bathrooms are presented to the clientele in the LAU- FEN Forum, which opened in 2009. The striking, windowless concrete building is reminiscent of the shapes of a lavabo. In the same year, Similor, a faucet manufacturer that also belongs to the Roca Group, relocates its headquarters and production facilities to Laufen. Under one roof and joint management, the Swiss competence center for bathroom culture is created in Laufen. Last year, the sister companies "Keramik Laufen AG" and "Similor AG" moved even closer together. The entire product range of LAUFEN, arwa, Similor Kugler and Sanimatic: complete bathrooms, fittings for the bathroom, kitchen and public areas - is now united under the LAUFEN brand. In due course, the legal merger of the two companies will also follow. With Klaus Schneider, "Keramik Laufen AG" and "Similor AG" already have a joint managing director. "With this strategic decision, we are strengthening our position as a Swiss complete bathroom supplier. And this exclusively under the LAUFEN brand," says Schneider. The unified brand presence simplifies the customer approach and the clarity of the large range of fittings, he adds. "This allows us to implement innovative overall solutions even more strongly. We also benefit internationally from this decision," Schneider continues. www.laufen.ch Baselland Business 39