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June 4th, 2010
ISSUE # 222
Revised July, 2017
COMPETITION
Occasionally we are asked who our competitors are. We have files on over ninety firms, so it is a difficult question. In general, we see our strongest competitors only in their specialty markets. For example, in pulp and paper, The Dupps Company (and their licensee, Andritz) and FKC (Japanese) are very serious competitors. But, we very rarely go up against them in any markets other than pulp mills. Dupps, with roots back to the Anderson press, is strongest in rendering, and FKC, in municipal sludge. However, Vincent does not have equipment to offer for either of those two markets.
In the dairy and swine manure market our strong competitor is FAN (German), who was acquired by Bauer (Austrian. Cultural differences put them at a disadvantage in the States, but they offer a good screw press. We do not compete with them in any of the other forty-plus markets that Vincent serves.
Vetter is a German competitor whom we see in spent coffee, corn wet milling, and some vapor-tight applications. They are an old company, founded in 1934; we found correspondence between founders Hans Vetter and Dan Vincent dated sixty years ago. Fortunately for Vincent, Vetter was acquired by an American firm (Dedert), and then that firm became part of yet another, Anhydro, of Denmark. Vetter was combined with a British dryer company and became VetterTec. Anhydro sold VetterTec to the Moret Group, a French family-owned business. These changes have shifted their focus from selling presses to offering dryer systems and turnkey projects, especially for biofuels and DDG.
Ponndorf is another old-line German company. We have encountered them only in spent brewer’s grain at beer breweries. Today their designs would be considered outdated.
Stord in Norway entered the US sugar beet industry in 1962 and became a very strong competitor. They also came to dominate the fish meal industry, where Vincent had previously been strong. After several changes in ownership, as of May, 2013, Stord International AS has become a member of the Putsch Group. Putsch USA is the North American source for all Stord press needs in addition to any other Stord machines in operation as of January 1, 2014.
Stord specialized in huge screw presses, with screws 60″ in diameter, where Vincent has little to offer. Today they offer only very large twin screw presses. They have been a competitor in the SPC (Soybean Protein Concentrate) vapor-tight press market. Today Haarslev produces their versions of the Stord presses.
Corn wet milling is a key market for Vincent Corporation, where we offer presses for germ, fiber, and foots. The dominant supplier has been Vetter, by far. However Gauld, now part of Kadant, built screens for Vetter presses and found success offering a press to go with the screens. For a while an Argentine company, Frannino, took over by offering a larger capacity machine, especially for germ. It may be that Frannino presses are now made by Tecnovin. Regional firms, Conveyor Engineering and Manufacturing and Summerlot, have come to offer their versions of the Vetter/Frannino presses.
Hycor was an American competitor who, twenty-five years ago, beat us every time we went up against them. However the company was bought and sold two times, and today we never run into them. Under the name Parkson they specialize in the municipal wastewater market, which is one in which Vincent does not participate. Because of the wide range of municipal machinery they offer, they are not focused on screw presses.
We have a number of very small competitors. One is PT&M (Press Technology & Manufacturing), who used to have a presence in pulp & paper and whom we now find only in manure.
Manure seems to attract a number of firms. At each year’s World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin we typically see at least one new screw press manufacturer. They drop out at the same rate. For a while the Eys press from Turkey led the market. Today the Italian Sepcom and Doda presses are strong in the dairy field. Vincent recently started a partnership with Trident, and they are doing very well in the dairy market.
The best known names in wine presses are Le Coq (French) and Diemme (Italian). Spanish firms, Aralsa and Marzola, offer their own similar versions. Vincent does not participate in that market.
In the citrus market Di Bacco of Tucuman, Argentina offers a press which was originally built from Vincent VP-22 drawings over forty years ago. They have improved the design of the rotating cone feature, and they have increased the taper of the conical form of the screw shaft. Most notable is increased screened surface on the discharge spout and the OD of the cone. The firm specializes in the mining equipment industry, and we run into them only in South America.
A great number of competitors have gone out of business. In their days they had famous names, and their equipment is still found in industry. The Jackson Church Company, probably acquired by General Motors in the 1920’s, made their famous Zenith press for sugar beets starting in the 1800’s. Vincent acted as a distributor and sold these vertical presses in the citrus industry up until 1952, when we started building our own horizontal presses. The Zenith design was picked up by Jones Beloit (pulp & paper) and Gulf Machinery (citrus) in the States and GUMACO in Brazil. All of these firms are now gone. Only one Brazilian firm, RG Sertal, continues to offer the vertical press. The primary weakness is that the presses have vertically positioned screws, making maintenance a challenge.
Similarly, the Renneburg family made screw presses for five generations before being taken over by Heyl & Patterson. We rarely see them today. They were strong in the fishmeal industry.
Speichim Pressoir Colin in France and Garolla in Sicily also produced a significant number of screw presses. These were more complicated, each in its own way, than modern presses.
A curious situation exists with the Rietz press. In 1968 Vincent was joined with Rietz, a California food machinery company. However the deal came apart in a recession a couple years later. It ended up with Rietz manufacturing their Series RSP presses, built to Vincent’s Series VP drawings, paying a royalty. Rietz sold these presses mostly into the deciduous fruit and wine industry on the West Coast. At the same time Vincent continued selling the same presses, mostly into the citrus industry. Rietz was acquired by Berwind, then Bepex, then Hosokawa, and then they were spun off. Today they focus on other food processing machinery, and we rarely see them in the marketplace.