Pleuger Industries, the Hamburg specialist for submersible motor pumps, turns 90. Pleuger’s recent repositioning as an independent mechanical engineering company and its continuing expansion provide Pleuger’s long-standing workforce with plenty of reasons to celebrate: At the end of June, the Pleuger family celebrated a success story with its new private equity partner, which began in the Golden Twenties of Berlin and continues at the company’s headquarters in Hamburg-Wandsbek. To this day, Pleuger Industries manufactures its submersible motor pumps, plunger pumps and thrusters in Germany.

The patent on which Pleuger’s modern submersible pump units are still based dates back to 1929. Friedrich Wilhelm Pleuger, an engineer from Bonn on the Rhine, developed the glandless motor. This was a groundbreaking alternative to the conventional borehole shaft pumps and piston pumps. For the first time, the water-filled engine made it possible to pump water from great depths and particularly narrow wells. The most important novelty was a liquid-proof, wet insulation of the stator winding, which enabled the motor to be coupled vertically in the intake area below the pump.

The patent on the glandless pump formed the basis for Pleuger’s later success. First used in the construction of the Berlin subway in the prosperous 1920s, the submersible motor pump helped to bring the Hamburg company to worldwide success by the end of the 1970s. Since then, pumps from Wandsbek have been used for municipal water supply, flood protection, mining, offshore wind farms and oil rigs. Thousands of ships and platforms worldwide are equipped with Pleuger technologies in the form of pumps or ship maneuvering systems.

Pleuger was recently part of the American Flowserve Group, but Flacks Group, a private equity company, bought Pleuger out of the U.S. parent company in 2018. Since then, management of the traditional German company has been operating from its headquarters in the heart of Hamburg’s Wandsbek district. Pumps and pump motors are still manufactured there today, from the planning sketch to the last screw. Such a depth of production is atypical for the Hanseatic city, and underwater motor pumps “Made in Germany” continue to be in great demand.

The demand for modern pump solutions in U.S. industries led to establishing a subsidiary in the U.S.