In 1964, Günter and Margret Blase founded a small business called Igus in their garage in Cologne-Mülheim, Germany. Today, the company is a global brand, supplying customers worldwide with lubrication-free and maintenance-free ‘motion plastics, robots and cable assemblies’. This year, the company is celebrating the founding couple’s joint 90th birthday.

A year after the company was founded, its very first motion plastics were manufactured in a 55m² garage. Having spent eight years at a plastics company, Mr Blase recognised the huge potential of plastics and how injection moulding made scaling up possible and profitable, and subsequently set up his own business. His wife Margret, who also turned 90 in April and was a tax accountant, supported his idea; she took over the finances of the new company while Mr Blase focused on production.

For six years, the newly formed Igus produced plastic ‘motion components’ — in this garage — as a contract manufacturer for a few industrial customers. To celebrate the 90th birthdays of the founding couple, an exact replica of the original garage was erected in front of the current Igus factory campus — a 90,000m² facility that was designed by architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw in 1994. Inside the replica garage were some milestones of the company’s history, such as the first injection moulding machine Mr Blase used.

Much has changed since those humble beginnings. Igus now has a range of 200,000 parts from stock, as well as more than 4,500 employees and 35 companies worldwide. The company also abides by Mr Blase’s original maxim: “We must always plan for minus 50 and plus 50%”, referring to the ebbs and flows of the manufacturing world.