About BHS

The company’s history began more than 400 years ago when an iron smelting facility was built at the current headquarters. Back then, the facility produced wrought iron from locally mined iron ore.

The iron smelting industry in this region came to an end, marking the end of furnace operations at the “Königlich Bayerisches Hüttenwerk Sonthofen” (Sonthofen Royal Bavarian Smelting Works). The site shifted focus to begin producing a wide range of machinery, equipment, and foundry products.

The first twin-shaft mixer for concrete production is shipped from the factory. With a small initial mixing trough filling of 0.15 m³ – the Sonthofen mixer evolved to meet growing demand. Today, the largest twin-shaft batch mixer holds up to 9 m³ of hardened concrete per batch and is known worldwide as ‘Das Original’ twin-shaft design among concrete mixers and is considered an international industry benchmark. In 2019, the company delivered the largest twin-shaft mixer in the corporate history to date with a filling volume of 28,000 liters.

The first crusher was built and used at local construction sites. The advantages of mechanical assistance at major construction sites lead BHS to develop further shredding machines over the coming decades, laying the foundation for today’s range of shredders.

After WWI, “Hüttenamt Sonthofen” became part of the state-run “Bayerische Berg-, Hütten- und Salzwerke AG” along with other Bavarian enterprises. During this change, it was renamed “BHS-Hüttenwerk Sonthofen.”

BHS developed the first rotary pressure filter. This innovation led BHS engineers to develop additional filter types for the efficient separation of solids from liquids, laying the foundation for today’s range of filtration equipment within the Process Technology division.

In the early 1990s, the State of Bavaria sold its shares in “Bayerische Berg-, Hütten- und Salzwerke AG.” As a result, the BHS plant Sonthofen became the legally independent company “BHS-Sonthofen GmbH.” Management, under the leadership of Dr. Christof Kemmann, took over all the company shares. The Kemmann family remains the owners of the company to this day.

BHS delivered the first rotor impact mill for a recycling application for metal recovery. This marked the beginning of the Recycling Technology division.

Starting in the 1990s, BHS has been doing business on an international scale. Initially, the company mainly operated in German-speaking countries. In 1998 the North American headquarters was founded in Charlotte, NC, marking the first international subsidiary for BHS-Sonthofen. Additional subsidiaries were established in China (2001), India (2007) and finally Russia (2013).

BHS acquired AVA GmbH & Co. KG, a leading process technology company based in Herrsching am Ammersee (Germany), to strengthen its market position in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors. This adds reactor, mixing, and drying technology to the existing portfolio of filtration technology which allows customers to vertically integrate their processes from reaction to final product with one, trusted vendor.

Thoma Elektrosteuerungsanlagen GmbH from Babenhausen, a specialized provider of control systems for process technology systems, becomes part of the BHS Group was renamed as BHS Control Systems GmbH & Co. KG. BHS Control Systems now designs and develops proprietary control technology for the BHS Group’s entire portfolio.

In early 2021, the BHS-Sonthofen Group opened a new production plant with a floor space of 5,000 m² in Hansika near Prešov, Slovakia to increase manufacturing capacity. The plant manufactures a wide variety of machine components for the Group’s three divisions and German plants in Sonthofen and Herrsching.

BHS-Sonthofen has held a 50-percent share in RW Recycling World GmbH, located in Merishausen, Switzerland, since September 2021 to secure the Group’s further strategic growth in separation, sorting and classification technology. In particular, the Recycling Technology division is expanding its technology portfolio and depth of added value to include key process steps in recycling processes for crushing, separating, sorting, sifting, balling, screening and separating.

In March 2022, the BHS Group acquired Eurostar Concrete Technology S.p.A., a renowned manufacturer of planetary mixers based in Udine, Italy. This acquisition expands BHS’s Building Material Machinery division, complementing the existing twin-shaft batch mixers with high-quality planetary mixers for batch sizes up to 6,000 liters. The addition provides customers with greater flexibility, offering a range of mixer technologies while maintaining the trusted reliability of BHS.

In July 2024, BHS-Sonthofen opened a new test center for the Process Technology division. On 450 square meters, significantly larger capacities are now available for laboratory and pilot tests. With state-of-the-art technologies for the process steps of solid-liquid separation, drying, mixing and reacting, the experts at BHS support their customers’ test series. The investment in the new Test Center is part of the growth strategy and strengthens the Sonthofen site.