Gründung und Entwicklung
Unsere »Meilensteine«
On May 21, 1949, the company is commercially registered. This date can be considered the foundation of NOVAPAX Appliances. The Motto of Johann Steiner was “Does not work does not exist” and various products have been manufactured in NOVAPAX premises in the Genest Strasse 6 in Berlin-Schöneberg such as hotplates, key blanks, gas lights and flat irons.
At the end of the 1950s, a business started with Opti, a zipper manufacturer from Essen, to develop zippers made of plastic. This was rather innovative as the zipper Opti-lon® did not consist of individual teeth but of plastic spirals that were closed or separated by a slider. It was inexpensive and could be produced in any length or color. Its light weight and colorful design were new and Opti-lon® became very fashionable.
In 1962, NOVAPAX built ceiling lights, designed by Prof. Günter Symmank, for the new Berlin Philharmonics building of Hans Scharoun. The asymmetric base is very characteristic for the “Philharmonie Light 1” whose pentagonal form mimics the outline of the building. Various pentagonal “mushrooms” made of polyamide are densely staggered and filter the light which Prof. Symmank liked to call ‘sunset light’. The Philharmonics building was inaugurated in October 1963.
In 1967, the first injection molding machine of type A4-10 is completed. It is developed by NOVAPAX Berlin and constructed by NOVAPAX in Leer. First demonstrations took place in the booth of Ankerwerk Nürnberg at the plastic fair in Düsseldorf. Several patents of surface technology were registered over a longer time period. The heavy black telephone receiver that could be found in public telephone booths was produced for the German Postal Service.
In January 1972, Wolfgang Steiner returns to Berlin where he enters NOVAPAX Berlin as operations manager. He becomes a limited partner by injecting 20,000 DM of capital. For the Olympic Summer Games in Munich 1972, a media wall was installed at the Ku’damm intersection for which NOVAPAX designed and supplied plastic parts.
In 1997, the department of project management and sales was created. Project engineers acquire customers, work out offers, advise customers in technical questions, and accompany the transaction from the construction to the delivery of the final product. In the same year, a new joint venture called “BRUSS Kunststofftechnik” is created by the two partners “BRUSS Dichtungstechnik” and “NOVAPAX Steiner GmbH & Ko.KG”. It is located in Brieselang in Brandenburg. BRUSS participates with 2/3 while NOVAPAX participates with 1/3 in this company. This collaboration lasts for 14 years. Products include crankshaft gaskets and valve hoods.