For over six decades, our family-owned and operated company has been producing complex turned parts and tubular metal parts on the highest technical level. Frebel+Obstfeld was founded in 1951 by Friedrich Obstfeld and Wilhelm Frebel and it has been making continuous progress ever since.
Friedrich Obstfeld and Wilhelm Frebel establish the young company in Altena and start out with the production of automatic lathe parts and tubular rivets.
The product portfolio is significantly expanded by building a new plant. The production area is doubled. In combination with a multiple-route stacking system, the additional high rack warehouse now allows for a rational, spatio-economical beneficial and gentle storage of the highly sensitive solid and tubular raw materials.
The company founders' sons assume the role of management. From this point on, Jürgen Frebel (from 1986 until his retirement in the year 2000) and Graduate Engineer Hermann Obstfeld (from 1986 until today) have been leading the operations of the family enterprise.
The third generation of family Obstfeld takes an active part in the company. In 2008, Andreas Obstfeld, Business Economist, starts working for Frebel+Obstfeld and in 2012 he becomes the CEO of the company, just like his father. His younger brother Carsten Obstfeld, Graduate Engineer, perfects the team in 2013 and leads the technical plant management. In the year 2015, he is appointed CEO as well.
The first production site
The first company facility
Friedrich Obstfeld (center) with
employees on the first company trip
The second construction phase of the first plant
The completed first plant
company party
The first brochure
Turnery bar lathes at the second plant
The second construction phase of the second plant
We have a large scale manufacturing operation of over 3,000 sq. meters (32,300 sq. feet) and across two sites.
We employ approximately 40 qualified and long-standing staff members, most of them trained in-house.
We operate over 120 diversified production machines, of which 35 are specialized in custom automation developed in our in-house engineering department.
Annually, we process approximately 300 metric tons (660,000 pounds) of tubing and solid materials in the form of bars, tubes and coils.
We manufacture over 150 million parts annually. That represents about half a million parts every work day.
We export our products across the globe to over 30 countries, making the best quality product always within our customer’s reach.
In 2006 Frebel+Obstfeld extended its portfolio with the addition of pipe fittings with multiple collars, which are manufactured mainly for the automotive supply industry on machines developed in-house. On this note, the further development of the custom machine design division has been strongly expedited since the year 2009. An additional, more powerful bending machine for tubular and solid raw material was completed in 2011. Thus, the first mandrel bending automaton from our in-house development and engineering department was launched successfully in the year 2012.
