With over a century of innovation behind them, Roth Composite Machinery continues to shape the future of brush and broom manufacturing. We sat down with CEO Andreas Reimann and Gernot Müller, Sales Manager Brushes & Brooms, to discuss their approach to custom solutions, technological advancement and the company’s vision for the industry’s future.

What role does Roth Composite Machinery play in the brush and broom manufacturing market?

Andreas Reimann: We specialize in machinery that enables our customers to produce brushes and brooms in the most productive way possible, especially in cases where individual production methods, tools or machinery are needed. Our focus is on meeting the specific challenges and demands of each customer.

How has Roth’s century-long legacy shaped your approach to innovation?

Reimann: While we respect our history, we’re not looking too much backward, we’re looking forward. Our future lies in meeting the challenges and demands of our customers of tomorrow. We need to shape not just our future but the future of our customers. Our goal is to make them happy with our machines, which means providing productivity advantages and increased competitiveness. Our slogan is “Your performance made by Roth,” and that encapsulates our commitment to supporting customers in achieving greater performance from their production processes.

Can you elaborate on your approach to individual solutions for customers?

Reimann: Our task is to make and to keep our customers successful and strong in competition. To achieve this, it’s essential to take a close look at their specific needs and demands in terms of production processes. This varies significantly from customer to customer—everyone has their own demands and challenges in production. Therefore, we develop matching machine or automation solutions, which often results in individual customer applications.

Let me give you a concrete example: Several years ago, we designed a production line for a customer in Scandinavia who was producing staple-set paint brushes. This production line used a pick-and-place robot to pick up brush bodies from bulk storage and process them completely into finished brushes, including stacking them into boxes with almost no operator intervention. This enabled our customer to be highly competitive in Europe’s DIY stores against Chinese competition.

How much on-site interaction is involved in developing these custom solutions?

Reimann: It works both ways. To learn about their needs, it’s always necessary to see how they handle their products and processes. However, all customers also come to our facilities, at the latest, for the factory acceptance test. We typically integrate our customers into the development process as well.

What are some of the key technological milestones Roth has introduced?

Gernot Müller: Our driver is always to have the best possible solution. This means not only having a fast machine, but also looking into the machine itself to reduce wear and tear, and ensuring the machine is as flexible as possible with multi-use opportunities and accessibility.

Two perfect examples are our RoAn technology and the multi-flexible filament box. The RoAn technology — rotating anchor — is an excellent example of how to reduce wear and tear in the tufting tool, which is under steady stress. We reduced the parts that work on staple setting and forming, and by changing the method of cutting and forming, we reduced the forces needed because it’s a consistent operation rather than an interval operation.

The multi-filament box has been developed over the last 100 years through continuous improvement. It must handle all kinds of filaments, like abrasives, natural filaments or plastic filaments. This gives you the choice to run goat hair today and Arenga tomorrow. The flexibility inside this box allows for different properties and easy part changes at the picker unit. Accessibility is crucial as it must be easy to clean and optimized for daily operators.

What’s next for Roth Composite Machinery in terms of development?

Reimann: We need to go with the demands of competition and support our customers in keeping up with world markets. There are certain trends: cheaper products are getting even cheaper, and competition is increasing, especially in Europe from producers worldwide, particularly from Asia. Brush and broom producers are under high cost pressure, so weneed to help them.

We’e currently working on developing enhanced HMI software, including design software for the process steps of the machine to define where holes and bristles should be placed, making it much more convenient for machine users. This will be a milestone, especially with the integration of CAD model uploads.

How is Roth addressing sustainability in manufacturing?

Reimann: Our machines have been known worldwide for over 100 years for their longevity, reliability and low energy consumption. Furthermore, the consumption of media like lubricants or pressurized air for pneumatics is quite low. Our machines are already setting standards regarding sustainability.

For our production, we’re planning to integrate all three production sites into one building at one location. With this new facility, we’ll integrate sustainable features like solar modules for generating electricity and heat pumps for low-carbon energy for heating and cooling. When you consider that our sister companies produce such devices — for example, Roth Werke is the world market leader in floor heating systems — we’re well-positioned to implement these technologies.

(to be continued...)