DEUBLIN

Deublin Company was founded in 1945 by Luke Deubler and Dick Linn. The name of the company is a combination of their two last names.

Deublin’s entree into the Rotating Union market was its unique design that incorporated balanced mechanical seals.

During this time, the most popular type of sealing mechanism found in the industry was pressure type seals, which relied on the system pressure keeping wearing surfaces mated.

Increased speeds of various equipment, and specifically printing presses, resulted in rapid wear of pressure type seals.

Luke designed a mechanical seal into a rotating union. This design was immediately accepted by the industry and so began the growth of Deublin Company.

Early industries for which Luke designed unions, in addition to printing, were:

* Air Clutches * Gear Boxes * Machine Tool Spindles * Textile Equipment * Rubber Manufacturing Machinery * Continuous Casting Machines * Paper Machine Calenders

In fact, virtually any industry that needed to transmit air, water, oil, or hydraulic fluid from a stationary source into a rotating portion of their equipment, solved this problem with Deublin products.

Several years after the company had been formed, Dick Linn decided to pursue a completely different line of business and sold his shares to Luke making him the sole owner.

Deublin, like so many post World War II manufacturing companies, experienced steady and sustained growth throughout the 50’s and 60’s.

One of the many things that set Luke apart from the typical entrepreneur of his era was tremendous foresight and the ability to relate to people. These qualities came together in the late 60’s and provided the impetus for a simple decision that would truly separate Deublin Company not only from its competitors but also from most American industrial companies during that time.

Luke decided to take a trip overseas to assess foreign markets for Deublin products. It is hard to imagine but, in the late 60’s, the first country he chose to visit was Japan.

Luke, obviously, saw a tremendous potential in not only the Japanese market but also the European market as he subsequently made numerous trips to Germany. In 1969 Deublin GmbH was established. Shortly thereafter, in 1972, Deublin Ltd was established in England followed by Nippon Deublin in Japan in 1977.

The establishment of these three foreign subsidiaries in the late 60’s and 70’s would prove to be the cornerstone of a truly international organization that would be available to service key industries who later dominated the American market with imports of their products equipped with Deublin unions into the North American market.

Today, Deublin consists of 14 subsidiaries. In addition to Germany, England and Japan, Deublin currently operates wholly owned subsidiaries in Italy, Finland, France, Spain, Mexico, Singapore, Brazil, China, Austria and Poland. In addition, Deublin operates sales offices in Canada and Sweden.

Around the middle of 1989, Deublin was given the opportunity to purchase majority interest of SINT S.r.l. of Bologna, Italy.

In the early 1980’s, a consulting engineer from Finland was visiting a paper mill in Italy and was introduced to the SINT joint and siphon system for high-speed machines.

The Finnish paper industry, at that time, was in the process of substantially increasing the speeds of their machines. One of the major limitations in justifying the increased speed was the additional cost of the steam and condensate systems needed to satisfy rotary siphons.

The Deltasint Stationary Siphon and FS joint represented the technology needed in Finland to achieve increased machine speeds. While similar joints and siphons were available from the machine builder, an independent supplier of a joint with balanced mechanical seal and stationary siphon system did not exist.

This need was efficiently and effectively satisfied by SINT S.r.l.

Through the needs of the Finnish paper industry and the solution represented by the SINT products, the reputation of this small Italian company became quite prominent through Europe including Sweden, Germany, France, and England.

The merging of the Deublin worldwide organization and the SINT product technology was made possible by Deublin’s acquisition of SINT in June 1989. A new subsidiary, Deublin-SINT, was formed.

The Deublin-SINT line of products for the paper industry have been successfully introduced throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, China and Korea.

Likewise, Deublin’s rotating union business has continued to grow at record rates.

In December 1992, Deublin occupied a new world headquarters in Waukegan, Illinois.

The Waukegan facility represents an expansion of three times its former size.

The award-winning, ISO 9001 certified manufacturing plant, at the time, comprised 120,000 sq. ft. accommodating administration, sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, research and development as well as a complete training facility. (For a copy of the ISO 9001 certificate, click here).

Despite ten years of growth planned into the new facility, Deublin’s rapid growth consumed the entire facility in a short span of six years. In 1997, Deublin’s manufacturing floor space was increased by 65% to accommodate the explosive growth of sales in the Paper Industry. Deublin’s state-of-the-art plant features over 25 CNC Machines.

Due to increased business and demand set by Papermakers, in 2004, Deublin established Deublin Steam Systems in Buford, Ga. With this company, Deublin now provides comprehensive services for steam systems and dryer section optimization of Paper Machines.

Luke Deubler, founder and Chairman, passed away in August of 1993. His life and business philosophy is summarized in three of his favorite sayings.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
“Sell unions.”
“We haven’t started yet.”

Donald L. Deubler succeeded Luke as Chairman of the Board.