1877 Paul Freyburger from Stuttgart is granted patent no. 1454 for a kneading and mixing machine with two elliptical agitator discs.

1878 Paul Pfleiderer contractually takes over the patent for all time and all countries.

1879 Hermann Werner establishes engineering works in Stuttgart.

1880 The joint enterprise Werner & Pfleiderer is entered on the Commercial Register of the Cannstatt Local Court. In the beginning, the company makes mixing machines but the market and army provision offices soon start demanding complete systems for making rusk. Pfleiderer initially buys the necessary dough rollers, cutting machines and ovens from England. Soon afterward the company starts making its own.

1886 Subsidiary company established in Saginaw, Michigan, USA.

1889 Establishment of the company’s own production works in Vienna.

1890 Around the turn of the century, Werner & Pfleiderer has subsidiaries in London, Paris, Vienna, Moscow, and Saginaw (Michigan, USA).

1893 The company Werner, Pfleiderer & Perkins Ltd. is established in London. Perkins supplies the special steam pipes for ovens production. The works in Cannstatt has the suffix “CannstattSteam Baking Oven Factory” added to its trading name. At the same time, Werner adds ribbon proving cabinets and taper round-molders to the production range. The clientèle includes not only customers in the food industry but also chemical, paint and explosives manufacturers.

1902 WP Vienna takes over rivals Warchalovsky and becomes official baking equipment supplier to the Austrian armed forces.

1905 Richard Werner enters his father’s company as a partner.

1905 Werner & Pfleiderer now also build dough handling machines and dough dividers patented by Charles Pointon of London. John Pointon, the inventor’s son, starts work at WP.

1908 Otto Werner enters his father’s company as a partner.

1910
WP produces rubber washers, rubber kneaders and drying ovens for the rubber industry. Lehmann, the leading company in the field up to this point, is taken over.

1912 WP Vienna, which by this time also builds aircraft and aircraft engines, splits from Warchalovsky again so that” their specialties are not pushed out by orders for the

military”, according to the then managing director in Vienna, Otto Werner.

1910-1914 WP develops the Vienna mixing machine, which is the first to be driven by an electric motor. The first continuously operating suspension oven called the”AutoOven” by WP, bakes as many as 10,000 rolls an hour.

1914 Production is given over to war requirements, i.e. field bakeries. Richard and Otto Werner join up as volunteers.

1918 The company has lost 74 employees in the war. The plants in Britain and the USA are compulsorily expropriated. The British firm Joseph Baker & Sons buys the subsidiary in Saginaw and the British subsidiary, Werner, Pfleiderer & Perkins, and forms Baker Perkins Ltd. Numerous foreign branches have to be closed. The major part of the sales market is lost.

1921
An agreement known as the”CredoTreaty” is signed with Baker Perkins. It is a general contract covering market and product development. WP makes the first ovens to be constructed in steel rather than brick-built.

1927 WP suffers a financial crisis. To consolidate, the company is restructured and changed into a limited partnership.

1929 Otto Fahr successfully fights for compensation for the Saginaw plant.

1931 Otto Fahr becomes chairman of the board and, at the same time, silent partner, and eventually general partner in 1951.

1934 The Depression has not spared Werner & Pfleiderer. The number of employees has shrunk from 1,350 in 1929 to 55 and sales revenue has plummeted from 16 million to 5 million marks.

1938 The four-year plan of the National Socialist government invests in the use of synthetic rubber. Werner & Pfleiderer is involved in making the necessary machinery.

1938 Zyklotherm heating is introduced into baking oven design. It involves a central gas or oil-fired heater that produces hot air as the heat conduction medium, which is then controllably directed via channels around the baking or drying chamber. This enables precise temperature regulation. It also reduces operating costs.

1938 A new plant and office building are erected in Feuerbach near Stuttgart.

1939 The company makes machines for field bakeries, supplies mixers for explosives, artificial silk and rubber, and manufactures parts for artillery weapons, aircraft and rocket tail units(for the V II). The proportion of arms-related production is less than 20 %. Many former employees are at the frontline. In their place, so-called”foreign workers” are employed.

1944 The factory in Feuerbach is largely destroyed by air attacks. The company is occupied by the French Army in April 1945.

1945-1949 WP survives on the repair and replacement needs of customers. The majority of the management is removed from the company by the denazification process.

1949 Otto Fahr takes over the reins of the company again and his eventual successor, Helmut Steinmann, joins the business. Even though synthetic rubber production in Germany has to be shut down, WP’s business with the chemical, plastics and rubber industries is booming. The plasticizer for PVC production is invented and establishes itself as the standard.

1953 The first Matador oven is delivered. The MATADORremains the most successful deck baking oven on the market to this day.

1957 Separation of lines of businesses: the plastics division is split off as an independent operation headed by Günther Fahr.

1964 Production of the MATADOR moves from Stuttgart-Feuerbach to Dinkelsbühl in Bavaria. The plot and buildings previously used as a sawmill are put to new use and reorganized in the years that follow, and finally replaced by new production halls and a new office building. New staff is recruited through newspaper, poster and cinema advertising and trained at company headquarters in Feuerbach.

1973 The WP Group’s entire oven production is based in Dinkelsbühl.

1979  Production of machinery for artisan bakeries moves to Dinkelsbühl.

1986 Krupp acquires a 50.1 % shareholding in Werner & Pfleiderer.

1992 Werner & Pfleiderer sets new standards in the baking sector with the still unrivaled, computer-controlled OBER loading unit(a name that has since become synonymous with automatic loading of deck baking ovens), the first automatic tray loader for roll baking systems, the Robomatic, and the first flour-dust-free bread baking system.

1996 Jürgen Horstmann takes over the artisan bakery systems arm of Werner & Pfleiderer GmbH and forms Werner & Pfleiderer Lebensmitteltechnik GmbH from it. The property in Dinkelsbühl remains under the ownership of Werner & Pfleiderer GmbH.

2013 60 years of Matador

2013 135 years of WP

2014 50 years of WP Dinkelsbühl