plumettaz

PLUMETTAZ > FROM VINEYARDS TO TELECOMMUNICATIONS

In 1923, Emile PLUMETTAZ, driven by an urge to be independent, set up a three employee workshop in Vevey, Switzerland. One of his first customers was Nestlé, for whom he had previously worked several years as foreman in the mechanical department of their condensed milk factory in Payerne Switzerland (his hometown).

The new company started with the design, development and manufacture of prototype machinery for the food processing industry. This included equipment such as wrapping machines for cheese and chocolate sweets and also cherry pitting machines. Because the market for prototype machinery was limited, the company also did general mechanical subcontracting work.

By 1929, the number of employees had increased to 15. Then, the 1930 depression hit the food machinery industry very hard and the company had to find new activities to survive. Mechanizing the growing of grapes on the steep Swiss hillsides, by using a motorized winch, provided the much needed solution. This market was expanded by designing and manufacturing a whole series of ploughing tools that could be pulled with the motorized cable winches. Until 1945, sales were limited to the Swiss market.

In 1943, Emile PLUMETTAZ was joined by his son Fernand and they founded a company named PLUMETTAZ & Cie and expanded into new products which included :

• A new lightweight vineyard winch marked by the RUEDIN company in Cressier (Neuchâtel).
• An entirely new type of winch, based on a twin-capstan principle, originally conceived by Mr. E. LEDERREY, a leading wine producer from Grandvaux.
• The manufacture of circulating pumps for central heating systems and for transformers.

It was during this time that the trade-mark "PLUMETT" was adopted, which is still used for all of the company's products.

The development of drum and capstan winches became the basis for the respected company "know-how" and the nucleus of an ever expanding line of products. The requirement for lightweight, sturdy and reliable equipment led to unique solutions combining special materials with new driving system concepts. When standard components were not entirely satisfactory, the company designed and manufactured the components itself.

Starting in 1946, the company grew rapidly and expanded into export markets, especially into the French vineyard markets.

By 1947, the workshop in Vevey was outgrown and they moved into new buildings in Bex. The company became "PLUMETTAZ S.A." and increased to 40 employees. The company added a new self-propelled winch which later became a tractor mounted winch.

A new problem developed in 1960. Because of unfavorable exchange rates, the French market slowed down drastically. At the same time, the Swiss market for vineyard equipment was becoming both saturated and smaller, because of new cultivating methods that made ploughing unnecessary.

Important improvements and new applications had to be developed for the winch products. These included a 2-ton capstan winch which was used for forestry work, a portable version and also a model to be mounted on utility vehicles such as Jeeps and Land Rovers.

Capstan winches have important features that differentiate them from drum winches. Because the drum is used only for storage, rather than for pulling, the line pull and the line speed can remain constant, regardless of the cable length.

The important users of capstan winches are public utilities, civil engineering and the military. The telecommunications and utilities industries are especially important growing markets for underground cable installations. Other common uses are for recovery of stalled or damaged vehicles (including tanks), moving rail cars on sidings, hauling logs and assisting the operations of "snowcats", used for maintaining steep ski areas.

In 1980, PLUMETTAZ entered into an exclusive licence agreement to develop and manufacture a new patented hypocycloid gearbox called a Tranquart or Quadrant Drive. The new design has excellent weight to performance ratios and can achieve extremely high gear reductions, up to 1:1000, all with minimal backlash. A particularly large user of the Quadrant Drive is POWER CLIMBER Inc., a U.S. manufacturer of swing stages used on high rise buildings throughout the world. The company is now working on several other important applications for these unique transmissions.

With the advent of fiber optical cables for telecommunications, including cable T.V. systems, the company developed a complete new line of equipment for placing and installation of these sensitive cables. They now have an exclusive world licence for the new "CABLEJET" system developed by the Netherlands PTT. The new system "floats" continuous lengths of fiber optical cables through installation tubing, using only compressed air, for distances up to several miles or kilometers.

The company has continually extended the range and performance characteristics of their transformer oil circulating pumps. Through improvements in the weight and size to performance ratio of their pumps, they have become the major supplier to the leading European manufacturers of railway engines.

The main equipment developed and produced are winches and cable feeders for underground cable laying of both energy and telecommunication cables, equipment designed for light overhead line construction, as well as jetting equipment for the installation of fibre optic and conventional telecommunication cables.

In addition to that PLUMETTAZ S.A. offers OEM products (original equipment manufacturer) like hoist for suspended plateform, oil circulating pumps and quadrant drives as well as level crossing gate drive mechanisms.

The products are sold and used in more than 60 countries throughout the world, all under the "PLUMETT" trademark