Printed in The Canmaker
More than 100 canmaking professionals and their partners attended the 25th anniversary celebrations of Roeslein & Associates, the leading industry project integrator, at its newly expanded fabrication facility at Red Bud in Illinois yesterday.
In a moving address, co-founder Rudi Roeslein paid tribute to all those who had supported his vision to build canmaking plants using unitized and pre-assembled modular units to speed up and facilitate the commissioning new two-piece beverage can lines.
In particular he talked of his parents, who were at the event, who had the courage to leave Austria and bring him and his brother to the US in 1956, the friends who had supported them, and after deciding to switch from playing soccer professionally to pursue electrical engineering, the faith of partner Fritz Dickmann, who like Roeslein put up $50,000 to create the new company in 1990.
“When I think about how we have got here today, there are many of you in this audience without whose support we wouldn’t be here,” said Roeslein. He started with a “handful of people and an idea” and collaborating with a group from Ball, the first project was a third line at Toluca in Mexico for Fabricas Monterrey. The idea was to enable canmaking plant to be set up and tested before being installed, cutting the commissioning time by half, initially using third party suppliers.
Rexam also showed early faith with new projects and Poland-based Can-Pack’s expansion was based on Roelsein’s expertise. The company expanded into a new headquarters in St Louis in 1997 but four years later the industry suffered a downturn, and orders dried up, so Roeslein and Dickmann took no pay for a while and many of the team helped with a pay cut.
Since then there has been steady growth as canmaking plants in Europe and Asia were built, followed by Africa. Ten years ago Roeslein’s dedicated fabrication facility was constructed at Red Bud, a small town in a farming community 40 miles east of St Louis. Offices in Denver, Colorado, and Shanghai in China have been established.
It was all based on the premise that “we’re not done until the customer is totally happy”, says Roeslein.
Expansion into other industries, such as oil and gas, power systems and refineries has spread the expertise. Roeslein now sees himself at a turning point and having enabled the 350 employees around the world share in the company’s success with an ESOP program, he has set up Roeslein Alternative Energy to develop the generation of compressed gas systems using methane generated from waste. “It will use the same modular concept for a quick return on investment,” he said.