The heart of our production
30 years contain 30 years of experience, passion, an eye for detail and much more. Two people who have all this are our machine technician Frank Gnaase and enameller Reinhold Lohkemper. For decades, they have been working hard in our manufacturing and enamelling works to provide the highest Bette quality.
A Bette bathroom product will last for a very long time. We guarantee this for *30 years. It takes experience for something to last this long. And people like Frank Gnaase,head of our manufacturing department at Bette. A man who's been here for decades, and knows every corner of the place.
And when he wends his way through this high-performance unit, it's as if he were showing his living room at home.
He is able to operate all the machinery, and in fact helped to developed much of it. He can still remember how much harder people had to work when there was less technology. He is someone who keeps his cool even in the midst of flying sparks in the welding booth.
A 30-year guarantee is quite a promise. Behind it is another characteristic that Frank Gnaase has: openness. Because he is the man that designers and the development department come to with their new ideas: unusual shapes, spectacular designs, elegantly pared-down projects. "We're a pretty bold bunch here," says Frank Gnaase. And the pride that this sentence also holds demonstrates quite clearly that he loves a challenge.
Products that not only set standards all over the world, but that also have our family company's customary high quality. Forward-thinking innovation combined with Westphalian craftsmanship and engineering skills. Products that justify the 30-year guarantee.
Then there's determination. After all, he is the man who sits down with his colleagues so they can work out together how to turn the sketches into real Bette baths, shower areas or washbasins.
The BetteFloor concept changed the market, and is today the global standard.
Something else that is required is an eye for detail. We achieve the special durability and smoothness of our baths, shower surfaces and washbasins using a wet-in-wet enamelling technique we’ve been perfecting for decades. The procedure permanently binds three ultra-thin layers of our special enamelling formula to the titanium steel carcass in two firing steps at 850°Celsius. And we need colleagues like Reinhold Lohkemper for this to work.
Reinhold Lohkemper,shift supervisor in the enamelling works, can tell straight away whether the outcome is right. He checks the fired bathroom products when they come out of the furnaces. And finds the problem when the complex track system that carries the goods through the halls comes to a halt.
Reinhold Lohkemper has a keen sense for these things. He's been working for Bette for over 30 years.
Now his hair has turned grey, the children have long since grown up, and grandchildren have come along. There's plenty of honest work and almost half a lifetime in 30 years. And in fact, you can ask Reinhold Lohkemper himself what you have to do to make sure the quality is right in the end.
He talks about the closeness amongst colleagues, the barbecues they have enjoyed together, the Turkish weddings, and how they sit down together over cake when one of the shift workers has a birthday – and it's quite clear that there is a close attachment, a rootedness, deep feelings.
A pause, his eyes shining, because now he's come to what is most important to him: "Every year there's a new sensation here at Bette! A new colour, a great shape, some kind of fantastic model! And then I have to work out how I'm going to get it through the furnace." He laughs. "It's something I always look forward to."
And one thing is clear: above all, you need enthusiasm.
A quality promise demands a lot. It takes people like Reinhold Lohkemper, Frank Gnaase and around 380 other fabulous members of staff to produce the exclusive Bette bathroom products. Products that will last for a long time. We guarantee this for 30 years.