Bareiss looks for growth in North America

PITTSBURGH—Bareiss Prufgeratebau GmbH is a family-owned German firm that has been doing business in North America for some time, but one of its owners says the firm isn't well-known here.

But the Oberdischingen, Germany-based maker of a wide range of measuring devices hopes to change that, according to Oliver Wirth, general manager of Bareiss. He also is a managing director and co-owner of the company along with his cousin, Katrin Shen, who heads up sales and marketing.

"We've been selling in the U.S. a long time, but most of that was not under our brand," Wirth said at the recent ACS Rubber Division International Elastomer Conference in Pittsburgh. "Some resellers in the U.S. put their own sticker (brand) on it. We are around quite some time, but nobody knows it."

Geographically, about half of Bareiss' sales come from Germany, with another 25 percent coming from the rest of Europe, he said. That leaves just 25 percent for the rest of the world, including Asia and North America.

But that is starting to change some already, and should evolve even more in the future, Wirth said. It established offices in Hong Kong back in 2011 and China in 2012, along with Taiwan later in 2020. But its first North American office didn't come until 2018, when Bareiss USA Inc. was established in Arden, N.C., with Greg Skory as managing director. An office in Toronto opened earlier this year.

As part of that effort, Bareiss began to sell under its own name, and has started a campaign to raise its brand awareness. That includes attending shows like the IEC, along with ramped-up marketing and advertising.

Wirth said Bareiss also is starting to sell directly through these regional offices, rather than relying solely on selling through distribution.

"We have big hopes for the continent," he said. "We want to set up a calibration lab there as well so we can do service on our own devices in North America. We will have shorter lead times for re-calibration, which will give a huge boost to our North American customers."

Wirth's grandfather, Henrich Bareiss, founded the company in 1954. The intention was to build the highest quality products, and durometers was the original offering.

Since then, the German company moved further in developing hardness measuring products. It gained patents for new technology over the years, including introducing testing equipment that reduced the influence of the operator. "From the original durometer, we came to a digital durometer, which had a hand tube around it to apply the correct force, and to apply for the correct amount of time in terms of Shore measurements," Wirth said.

Bareiss also claimed to be the first worldwide testing equipment manufacturer that could measure irregularly shaped materials, he added. "We developed a measuring hat, which could be used to measure on curves, on convex and concave samples," Wirth said. "This helps a lot to measure the hardness on finished parts, which is more useful for most of the customers than measuring on special test samples."

Besides hardness, it now offers a wide range of products that includes rebound resilience and abrasion testers, all related to rubber, plastics and foams.

One Bareiss offering is a modular testing system where the customer can change measuring heads, or go from one test method to another. For example, the device could handle a Shore A material for rubber, a Shore D for plastics, or a Shore 00 for foams or silicones.

"It's a very flexible and modular system," he said. "On one hand you can change the measuring head, but on the other hand you can change the sample holder, which is at least as important as the measurement itself, because if you don't have a good counter part, then the measurement value will not be correct."

Over the years, Bareiss also has been active in industry activities related to standards and standardizations. It has been an ISO 17025 accredited laboratory since 1996, and was the first lab in Europe accredited as a calibration lab for hardness devices for rubber and plastics. The company GM also said the firm was active in creating calibration standards for the industry.

Wirth himself is a member of the standards committees in both the U.S. and Germany, and attends ISO meetings,

But not everything revolves around rubber and polymers at Bareiss. While rubber-related business accounts for the majority of revenues, followed by plastics, the company also makes testing and measurement instruments for the food, and pharmaceutical and medical sectors.

On the food side, Bareiss markets a device that measures the firmness of fruit. The first one sold in the U.S., Wirth said, was to a company called Appeal Sciences in California, which makes a biological skin for avocados to boost the shelf life. The variety of equipment sold in the food sector also is used by makers of chocolate, gummy-type candy and, most recently, a big bar of nougat for hardness testing. "From time to time we get some nice samples," he quipped.

In pharmaceuticals, typical applications include instruments for measuring the firmness and hardness of tablets and soft-gel capsules.

From the founder, leadership of Bareiss transferred in 1993 to Brigitte Wirth and Peter Strobel, Oliver's mother and uncle. From there, the third generation—Oliver Wirth and Shen—took control in 2017. Wirth himself only joined the Bareiss team at that time, while Shen (his uncle's daughter) has worked with the company for more than a decade.

He said they work well together, and both had planned on being in Pittsburgh, but only Wirth could get a "national interest exception" to travel to the U.S. because of travel restrictions in place at the time of the IEC. They split up duties, with Wirth concentrating on new product development and the technical side of the business, and Shen tackling sales and marketing.

Bareiss, in the near future, will introduce its first rubber process analyzer, dubbed the RPA Ultra. But Wirth emphasized that the new offering is far from a "me-too" product, claiming that this will be the industry's first dynamic mechanical rheological tester with full rotation.

The firm said the RPA Ultra can be used to characterize polymers, mixtures and foods. With the construction of the product, it said, the lower test chamber of the device can be rotated, giving more than 360 degrees of potential amplitude.

"We try to do something that is more advanced," Wirth said. "The full rotational lower die can do steady shear viscosity measurements."

Bareiss worked closely with potential customers both in rubber as well as food in developing the RPA Ultra. The shear rates in typical RPAs generally run up to 30 per second for steady shear measurements, while the Bareiss offering can go up to 500 per second.

In addition, it gives results that can be used for simulating a process, such as injection molding or extrusion, where high shear rates are required, according to Wirth.

Like many companies, business took a hit in 2020 because of the COVID-19 global pandemic, but sales this year are on track to match those of 2018, the company's best ever.

Wirth sees a bright future for the company, which in 2019 built a state-of-the-art production building in Oberdischingen that offers more space for the production of precise testing devices with both sustainable and technically innovative designs.

"I see big growth because we have a lot of new products coming up. Not just the RPA, but also some other products and add-ons to existing products," he said.

He also sees a good future in designing technology with automation in mind. Bareiss does a lot of solution business for customers, and is building up a fully automated physical test laboratory that will offer all the different measuring techniques: hardness, density, rebound resiliency, tensile and rheology.

The need for automated offerings, Wirth added, became particularly apparent during the pandemic, when it became difficult having people working in close proximity to one another.