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C-Tech Industries, Scaling mountains

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US
Published : July 2007

C-Tech Industries was already the leading producer of professional-grade power washers in the US before 2004, when it was acquired by Germany’s Kärcher. Today the company is part of a global powerhouse, as Greg Andrews explains

Even before 2004, C-Tech Industries was the top manufacturer and distributor of professional pressure washers in the US, with annual sales of close to $100 million. Early that year, the company linked forces with Germany’s Kärcher AG, which identified the company as the right partner to help it further develop a presence in the US marketplace.

That presence is now an impressive one, with Camas, WA–based C-Tech continuing to produce some of the best-selling pressure washers under a variety of brand names and the parent company helping to clean up some of the country’s best-known monuments. Kärcher recently completed the pressure washing of the Mount Rushmore presidents’ monument, a project that helped put Kärcher on the map in the North American market.

With the acquisition, Kärcher bought a company with a deep expertise in the pressure washer business, having been formed through the merger of several smaller companies in a consolidation trend that began in 1999.

C-Tech sells and services hot- and cold-water pressure washers and a slew of related products—automatic water-based parts washers, oil-water separators, dry ice blasting systems, wastewater treatment systems, cleaning detergents, and high-pressure pumps—under a host of brand names, including Hotsy, Landa, Spraymart, and the Cuda and Water Maze Series. Increasingly, C-Tech’s products are being sold under the Kärcher brand as well.

While C-Tech came together through the rollup of several smaller companies in 1999 and at its peak employed around 2,500 people, Kärcher was founded in 1935 and is a $1.6 billion a year, privately owned company whose product offerings include blasting systems, industrial vacuums, steam cleaners, floor sweepers, floor scrubbers, car and truck wash systems, drinking water systems, and wastewater treatment systems.

Worldwide, Kärcher makes close to 5 million machines each year in its various product lines at manufacturing facilities in Germany, Italy, the US, and Brazil. Its cleaning expertise goes well beyond Mount Rushmore as well; Kärcher has cleaned everything from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to centuries-old columns around St. Peter’s Square in Rome and the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Not long after the merger with Kärcher, C-Tech revamped its production facilities lineup, consolidating its five North American factories into three and focusing more resources on two new state-of-the-art facilities in Springdale, AR, and Monterrey, Mexico. The company said the moves would help it better compete with a growing number of competitive products built overseas, particularly in Asia, and often priced lower than those made in the US.

Several of C-Tech’s own brands enjoy strong market penetration and brand recognition. Landa Water Cleaning Systems holds a number of patents for its parts-washer designs and are found in many machine shops and other manufacturing operations. The Hotsy brand—an abbreviation of “hot systems”—got its start in the 1970s and was founded on the strength of early steam cleaning technology that could run on various power sources, including kerosene, diesel fuel, liquid propane, or natural gas.

“The marketplace has become more competitive through the impact of global sourcing,” CEO and President Andrew Gale said at the time. “It has become more critical than ever that we remain price-competitive while still providing the unique services that have made us the leading manufacturer in our industry. It is critical to our business model that we get our long-term cost structure in place so we can remain full-service and price-competitive.”

The revamp left C-Tech Industries with a 200,000-square-foot facility in Camas, where products such as wastewater treatment systems and high-end pressure washers are made and where new product development takes place; a 103,000-square-foot plant in Springdale; and a 120,000-square-foot plant in Monterrey that can be expanded to up to 400,000 square feet.

Gale also said at the time that the company had considered establishing its own manufacturing presence in China but found that the time to get products to market was unacceptably long.

By keeping high-end production in the US and moving more cost-sensitive products to the Monterrey plant, C-Tech was able to “strike the balance between lower costs, high quality, stability, and proximity to our customers,” he added.

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