The south German special machine manufacturer Bausch+Ströbel extends its product range in filling and packaging machines by fully automatic, high-precision inspection machines for leak testing, visual inspection and spectroscopic systems. In December 2012 the purchase of Wilco was finalised at their headquarters in Wohlen in the Swiss canton Aargau. Both Wilco founder and president, Martin Lehmann, and Siegfried Bullinger and Markus Ströbel, managing partners of Bausch+Ströbel, are confident that the two companies will complement each other ideally.

For 45 years Bausch+Ströbel has been producing machines and production lines for the industrial processing of pharmaceuticals in liquid and powder form. These range from semi-automatic laboratory machines to fully automatic stand-alone machines to highly complex production lines processing containers such as vials, bottles, syringes, ampoules or cartridges. The individual work steps include unpacking the containers, cleaning and sterilizing them, filling, closing, inspecting and labelling them.

With Wilco, an unparalleled expert for leak testing and quality control technologies, Bausch+Ströbel increases its product range for the pharmaceutical sector.

An innovative team of highly specialised scientists and engineers at WILCO constantly develop new technologies and integrates them into fully automatic packaging lines and systems. The complex filling and packaging lines made by Bausch+Ströbel now also profit from this technology. Wilco has a wide range of testing units for various branches such as the pharmaceutical, chemical, food and packaging industries. These high-precision equipment and machines can be used in laboratories or equally in fully automatic production lines with an output of up to 1,500 containers per minute. The company holds a number of international patents for systems for a wide variety of applications.

"With the combined know-how from both companies we see opportunities resulting from the cooperation in research, development and in marketing," said Siegfried Bullinger and Markus Ströbel. Contact between the two companies existed already. Martin Lehmann, who founded Wilco in 1971, has the same point of view. The future of the company and its 110 employees were his main concern when finding a new owner for Wilco. He is sure to have made the right decision with Bausch+Ströbel, which is also a family-run business. The company philosophies are very similar. Martin Lehmann will remain CEO of Wilco. He sees an advantage that both companies will profit from each other at all levels and the product ranges of both firms will complement each other very well.