PRESS ARTICLE

Holp family has "hydraulic oil in its blood"

Murrhardt-Fornsbach, 06.05.2024

 

The pioneer in the field of pure rotation has made decades of unbeatable practical experience of more than 100 years.

Holp GmbH is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. Not very spectacular, say some. Unbelievable, say others, because the company's innovations are based on the practical construction machinery experience of Franz and Günter Holp - the senior can look back at an incredible 65 years and the managing director at 40 years of practical machine experience.

Many companies advertise with the slogan "From the practice for the practice", without making clear where the mentioned practical experience that goes into the respective product comes from. With Holp it's completely different, here you can understand why father Franz Holp and son Günter Holp, the managing director of Holp GmbH, definitely have the DNA of excavator operators and the two of them literally have hydraulic oil in their blood.

 

At work since the 1950s - always

Franz Holp, who founded Holp Erdbau GmbH 45 years ago in 1979, had been operating construction machinery since 1957. He continuously grew into the profession of machine operator, gained experience on different machine models and also knew all their technical details. Franz Holp was involved by Liebherr in the development of its B-series crawler tractors because he always knew exactly which features were really needed in practical use on the machine - thanks to the practical experience he had gained in his work.

Even when the company had long since been handed over to Günter Holp, Franz Holp had no thoughts of retirement and continued to pursue his passion of working, gaining no less than 65 years of experience in using construction machinery at the age of 88, before he had to leave the operator's seat - albeit only after his fourth hip operation and only very reluctantly.

 

Enthusiasm for machines - It’s in their DNA

Franz Holp also passed on this enthusiasm for construction machinery to his son Günter, who completed his first working hours on a caterpillar in 1980 at the age of just 14 and continued to drive machines during his training as a bricklayer. Due to back problems, Günter Holp underwent further training as a microelectronics technician before being drawn back to construction machinery in 1991 and joining his father's company, where excavators were used alongside caterpillars from 1992. Here he pushed the machines to the limits of what was possible, resulting in a spectacular crawler accident in 1991, which fortunately both man and machine survived - the crawler from that time is still in use sometimes today under Günter Holp's direction.

Soon, Günter Holp developed a new trenching bucket in order to be able to carry out the daily work in earthworks more efficiently, and this was in use from 1993. The background to this was a requirement from the forestry industry; they were looking for an attachment for cleaning trenches with which this task could be carried out while moving on the machine and was therefore much more time and cost-efficient than a trencher. The trench drag bucket is now in a museum - but it was the basis for Günter Holp's first patent - the VarioBucket.

 

Earthworks and inventions

Parallel to the day-to-day business of the earthworks company, which Günter Holp took over from his father as Managing Director in 1997, he was constantly working on new attachments to make the day-to-day work of the machine operators easier. In 1997, a patent application was filed for the VarioBucket, followed by the MultiGrip and KranFix in the years that followed, until the RotoTop was launched in 2007 and the success story of pure rotation began. To date, Günter Holp has accumulated a good 40 years of experience in construction machinery - despite his ever-increasing focus on mechanical engineering.

Even today, he still loves to swap the office for the excavator cab in his spare time and carry out excavation work for friends and neighbours. Günter Holp also likes to demonstrate the operation of the RotoTop and the other attachments to people on construction sites, at trade shows or in the Holp test arena, even if this is usually done by the dedicated members of the Holp team, so that everyone realises: Those who drive excavators at Holp really have the DNA of excavator drivers and know exactly what is important with everyday’s work, even if they sometimes sit in the cabin wearing a white shirt because they have previously calculated for the contractor how cost efficiency can be achieved on construction sites with the equipment. This way, Holp GmbH uniquely combines the thinking of contractors with the DNA of experienced excavator operators.