"Serving comes before earning" - This is the customer-focused corporate value under which Blaser Swisslube is celebrating its 80th company anniversary. It all started back in 1936 with "Blaha-Glanz" - a shoe polish. Since then, the company has grown from a small regional business into a global player. In the company's own Technology Centre, the focus is on research and development. This focus has resulted in a breakthrough being achieved in a current civil aviation project.

The first successful product made by the former Blaser+Co. AG was Blaha-Glanz, a waterrepellent shoe polish that was sold on the surrounding farms. Willy Blaser laid the foundation for today's company group in the crisis year 1936. As a 20-year-old who had been unable to find work in the painting trade he had trained in, he founded a one-man company in his parent's house in Hasle-Rüegsau where he produced lubricants and chemical-technical products especially for agriculture. Perseverance was the order of the day due to the shortage of raw materials during the war years.

The real upturn in the company's fortunes began after the war when the customer base expanded to include besides farmers, mechanical workshops, the construction industry, the wood and metal processing industries and the first industrial factories. "With the same pioneering spirit that was present when the company was founded, tireless work was done to continue to expand the company, to increase and modernise the manufacturing facilities, as well as to increase the level of research and development," explains the grandson and current Managing Director, Marc Blaser.

(Continued on next page)