The story
The company was founded in 1947 by Heinrich Roth as a craft business (manufacturing wash boiler stoves and garden slab plates). Under Manfred Roth (1939–2025), the founder's son, the company developed into an internationally active group of companies with locations in Europe, North and South America and China from 1962 onwards. In addition, the company expanded its business activities in the 1960s under Manfred Roth's leadership into the field of heating and sanitary technology, producing, for example, heating oil tanks.
Due to the susceptibility of steel tanks to corrosion when storing heating oil, the company decided to enter the field of plastics technology (large blow-molding technology for storage systems for fuels and biofuels) in 1970. Roth Industries also expanded the sanitary segment with the development of complete shower cabins. In 1977, the company Schlesinger, a manufacturer of machinery for brush and broom production, was integrated into the group. The following year, the Roth Werke GmbH was founded.
In the 1980s, the company began offering energy systems such as underfloor heating systems. In 1989, Roth Industries acquired Bolenz & Schäfer, a company active in the fields of hydraulics and filament winding, as well as the company EHA, which was active in special-purpose machinery for coating and impregnation processes involving web-based materials.
In the 1990s, Roth Industries invested in the development of hydraulic pumps. In 1992, Roth Industries established another site in Bischofswerda. At the end of the 1990s, the market for oil tanks collapsed, prompting restructuring measures within the company. For example, the sites in the east of Saxony, in operation since the early 1990s, were converted to the production of environmental technology (such as rainwater and wastewater systems) for industrial and agricultural applications.
In the 2000s, the company increasingly expanded abroad; in 2016, the company underwent a restructuring that consolidated its business segments in the areas of building and industrial technology. As part of this process, the subsidiaries were aligned with the Roth brand name: Roth Kunststofftechnik was renamed Roth Plastic Technology, the companies Schlesinger and EHA were merged to form Roth Composite Machinery, and Bolenz & Schäfer was renamed Roth Hydraulics.
In 2022, Roth Industries celebrated its 75th anniversary. The company also announced in 2022 that it would increase the number of apprenticeship positions for 2023 by around ten percent.
In October 2023, Roth Plastic Technology launched a new division for plastic- and injection-moulding-compatible design and development. At the end of 2023, it was also announced that Christin Roth-Jäger would take over the management of the corporate group from Matthias Donges.
In 2024, Roth Hydraulics acquired the company SFP Hydraulics, based in Houston, which manufactures bladder, piston and diaphragm accumulators. In January 2025, Manfred Roth passed away at the age of 85.
From Wikipedia’s article on Roth Industries, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4