Victrex Acquires Kleiss Gears to Bolster PEEK Gears Business

 

 

Victrex, West Conshohocken, Penn., has enhanced its ability to provide complete ‘integrated’ service through its acquisition of PEEK polymer gears specialist Kleiss Gears, Grantsburg, Wisc. In moving downstream in this manner, the company is aiming to accelerate the adoption of its Victrex PEEK gear proposition to meet the needs of the automotive industry.  Asked if this means the company will now be competing with its customers in PEEK gears, sources at Victrex gave us the following response.

 

First that Victrex’s focus is on building PEEK market growth and as such is striving to continuously improve the products and services it offers existing and new customers. The strategic decision to acquire Kleiss Gears is consistent with their goal to provide and improved service specifically on PEEK-based gears, bringing the much needed capability around engineering design, tooling, and durability testing.

 

“The market for PEEK gears is still much in its infancy and in order to facilitate market growth, Victrex has identified that an integrated capability is needed to provide the right robust gear solution in order to meet the high demands of the Tier1/OEM customers,” says one Victrex source.

 

According to Victrex, the aim is to use this integrated capability to shorten the development cycle for their customers. This starts from understanding the needs and challenges of its customers, leading to a design review of the typically metal gear system when NVH, wear and energy benefits can be clearly gained by moving to PEEK design.

 

The Kleiss manufacturing capability is built around polymer gear application technology only.  Victrex says its intention is to build further the global market for PEEK gears and help pioneer the replacement of metal gears in demanding environments, which in turn should increase the market opportunities for all of its customers—directly and indirectly.

 

Added Rod Kleiss, president of Kleiss Gears, “We have been partnering with Victrex for many years and are convinced that our customers and end-users will benefit from a more integrated approach, enabling them to develop and launch gears that solve their key challenges with greatly reduced development cycles.”

 

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