Dr. Bernd-Holger Zippe celebrated his 70th birthday!

There was every reason to be happy at ZIPPE Industrieanlagen GmbH: Our long-time managing director, shareholder and chairman Dr. Bernd-Holger Zippe celebrated his 70th birthday at the end of March. Since a big party had to be canceled due to the Corona pandemic, he bought lunch for our entire workforce in the open air.

Dr. Bernd-Holger Zippe was born in Ilsenburg in the Harz Mountains in the former GDR, where he later often spent his summer holidays. He came to Wertheim am Main in 1951 – just five weeks old – as a refugee child with his mother Edith. His grandfather and father had already founded a small company here after they had fled the Sudetenland.

After graduating from high school, Dr. Bernd-Holger Zippe did his doctorate at the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart. He worked and researched here for six years. Then he went back home, where he joined the family business at the side of his father and mother.

In the past few decades, he had primarily driven the internationalization of the business. “I have consistently aligned the company to the world market,” reports Bernd-Holger Zippe. He presented the Wertheimer company and its products in many countries. “Customers buy from us to this day,” said Zippe, who also gave many presentations at international conferences and was chairman of the VDMA Glass Technology Forum for 20 years.

He said that he had modestly raised his own five children with his great wife Gertrud. She kept the family together at home when he was out and about for the company. “There were years when I wasn’t home for 30 weekends.”

Five years ago, when he was 65 years old, he handed over the operative business to his son and shareholder Dr. Philipp Zippe after almost 30 years.

Dr. Bernd-Holger Zippe still maintains long-term contacts from the glass industry, visits trade fairs and observes general market developments. He likes to look back on his many years of active experience in the glass industry. He has experienced a lot, some ups and downs – but in the end it always paid off to perform well and always be reliable towards the customer. Many customers from back then are still customers of ZIPPE today. That gives him great pleasure.