“We recognised that there was an opportunity to further strengthen our offer and the value we can bring,” says Graham Souter, sales director for the European region. “It was around 15 years ago when Nord-Lock Ltd joined, amongst others, Nord-Lock Inc as fully owned subsidiaries and that acted as a starting point of the company becoming the international group it is today. Since then, we have continued to grow our organisation in more territories, and this has been an important part of growing key relationships and bringing value both to our customers and our partners.”
The range of expertise that Nord-Lock Group now has at its disposal is neatly summed up in the stories of the technologies and the knowledge vested in the people behind these technologies, he adds. This expertise complements the origin of the Nord-Lock offering back in 1982 when the company started to develop what was to become the Nord-Lock washers, produced at a site in the remote parts of northern Sweden. “The products we manufacture are to be used where failure is not an option,” says Kurt Persson, senior advisor at Nord-Lock. “Developing these wedge-locking products with the customers’ application in mind makes us different. It has allowed us to excel at finding ways to help our customers and we continue to perfect it.”
The Superbolt trademark dates back to the 1970s in the steel city of Pittsburgh, USA. It was a man named Rolf Steinbock, who revolutionised the principle of jackbolts by replacing conventional nuts and bolts with multi-jackbolt tensioners. In the process, this eliminated many common bolting problems experienced by heavy industry in the area. The business grew with an additional site in St Gallenkappel, Switzerland, as more industries realised the huge advantages of the solution.
The story of Boltight was initially the story of Fred Heaton, who was involved when the technology of hydraulic tensioning was first developed near Birmingham, in the UK. In 1999, Heaton started Boltight and, together with a focused team, developed hydraulic bolt tensioning tools that are lightweight, compact and easy to use, and which are now used globally on numerous industrial applications.
According to Andreas Maile, managing director of Nord-Lock Germany, the broadened product range is key. “We are in a niche market where we need to have competence, experts and educated people,” he says. “Different industries demand different priorities, and having multiple product lines that meet the demands of the toughest applications is essential. Take product maintenance on a wind farm, for example, or providing bolting solutions for acidic environments or extreme heat.”
With bolting solutions from Nord-Lock Group being fitted on millions of applications worldwide, the safety aspect is of upmost importance. The Nord-Lock Group is involved in spreading bolting knowledge on a daily basis, offering both on-site and remote support, combined with the technical verification carried out from in-house laboratories to ensure secure and optimised solutions.
