Krones AG celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2026. A craft business founded in 1951 has developed into a globally active technology group for the food and beverage industry.
In 1951, Dr Hermann Kronseder founded a company for electrical machines in Neutraubling. Over the following decades, the first labelling machines developed into an internationally active company with more than 20,000 employees and activities in over 160 countries.
Internationalisation began in the 1960s. In 1966, Krones Inc. was founded in the USA as the first foreign subsidiary. Today, the portfolio includes machines and complete lines for beverage filling and packaging, process technology, intralogistics and digitalisation solutions as well as technologies for plastics recycling along the entire cycle.
Technological milestones
Around 7,000 patents document the company's innovative strength. Dr Hermann Kronseder registered the first patent in 1956. The technological milestones include the block solution from 1975, which compactly connects several machines, the energy self-sufficient and CO₂-neutral brewery from 2017 and the current „Ingeniq“ bottling line.
„Krones stands for entrepreneurial continuity across generations. The values with which my father founded the company still characterise Krones today - combined with the openness to constantly adapt to technological and social changes.“
Volker Kronseder, Chairman of the Supervisory Board and son of the company founder
CEO Christoph Klenk refers to the technological development: „From a semi-automatic system with 1,200 labelled glass bottles per hour in 1951 to today's output of over 100,000 PET bottles per hour, it is impressive to see how far we have come. With advancing digitalisation and increasingly intelligent systems, we are once again at an exciting turning point - and we can look forward to the possibilities that will open up in the future.“
Krones is focusing on digitalisation, process integration and resource-efficient production systems for the coming years. One current example is the LitePac Top packaging solution. The plastic-free secondary packaging holds PET bottles or cans together with a recyclable cardboard clip and replaces conventional film wrapping.
Source: Krones
