Nearly 50 years of history
Nearly 50 years of innovation!
It was by tinkering with a system to assemble a filler and a corker on a single frame that the COSTRAL company was born,
in the capable hands of Willy Kuhlmann, a wine producer from Hunawihr.
It all began in a garage, whilst tinkering with a machine... in 1975
Thanks to this production design, he was taken on by Clemens France (a subsidiary of Clemens Germany).
Clemens France was first set up in 1975 in Ribeauvillé. The machine invented by Mr Kuhlmann was redesigned and then christened FIAMAT.
After several years, achieving great success for the FIAMAT bottling group France, Germany and Switzerland, Willy Kuhlmann wanted to relive this experience and design a new machine, but this time for his own business.
As a result, in 1992, Clemens became COSTRAL and moved to Riquewihr.
A few years later, the COMET filling corking Monoblock machine was created, designed in the COSTRAL workshops, soon after to be joined by the GALAXY 3-in-1 Monobloc machine consisting of a rinser, filler and corker fitted to the same frame.
2006, a new era for COSTRAL
In 2004, Willy Kuhlmann's son, Frédéric Kuhlmann, started working part-time in the company, which at that point had 30 employees.
In 2006, he was appointed as Managing Director and took over the family business. This change marked a new era for COSTRAL: Innovation and export became pillars of the company while sub-contracting was reduced to a minimum. Frédéric Kuhlmann therefore, decided not to follow the trends of the 2000s, instead surrounding himself with an in-house team of highly-qualified experts.
In 2008, as many companies were suffering during the economic crisis, this was not the case for COSTRAL as the business was breaking into foreign markets such as America or Australia. In order to support this growth, COSTRAL's workforce quickly expanded to over 60 employees, thereby further increasing the share of resources allocated to innovation and Research and Development.
2010: COSTRAL became a globally renowned market leader.
In 2010, COSTRAL, already established as a world leader in small and medium-speed bottling machines (3,500 bottles/hour), acquired STONE Industrie, a manufacturer specialising inhigh-speed bottling machines (up to 20,000 bottles/hour).
Thanks to this acquisition, STONE Industrie saw its turnover rapidly increase, enabling the company to grow from 19 to 34 employees in 2015. At the same time, the company increased its performance in terms of production rates by designing machines capable of processing up to 25,000 bottles/hour.
Following this success, COSTRAL continued to grow by acquiring STENTZ, a specialist in bottle washing and drying machines (located only a few kilometres from COSTRAL).
Creation of the Made in France Alliance
Created in 2015, the Made in France Alliance was first formed bringing together four French manufacturers in the bottling industry: COSTRAL, STONE Industrie, ALBAGNAC and BEDI.
The key objective of the Made in France Alliance is to offer complete bottling and packaging lines with a capacity of up to 25,000 bottles/hour.
The same vision of the profession and the same customer philosophy has therefore made it possible to build entirely synchronised machines based on a selection of equipment, manufacturing methods, run rates and an ability to provide a very personal service to meet the demands of wine, beer, juice and spirit producers in France and abroad.
