Reimann company in the Wiesner and Hilbig manufacturing lineage from 1884 of South Australia's Eudunda
Johannes Berthold (J.B.) Reimann working as a blacksmith in the early 20th Century with fellow employee C. Orrock for J.T. Jansen's Eudunda company in South Australia, The Reimann family took over the Jansen business in 1951 and, as Reimann Manufacturing, won contracts for big pipe projects such as Snowy Hydro 2.0 (at right).
Images courtesy Reimann Manufacturing
Reimann Manufacturing continued a long tradition of manufacturing in the South Australian mid north town of Eudunda, with its strong German settlement.
Wiesner and Hilbig, founded in 1884 by Johannes Gottlieb Wiesner and Gustav Adolph Hilbig, were one of the founders of Eudunda's rich manufacturing history. Wiesner and Hilbig had five forges in the 1880s and cast plough and scarifier shares as well as casings for cereal strippers. Wiesner and Hilbig received a first order of merit for their stripper at the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition and a second order of merit for their stump-jump plough and stump-jump scarifier. The business was taken on by Carl and Heinrich Lutz in 1895.
With a team of up to 35 men onsite, the Lutz brothers were famed for manufacturing strippers. They regularly sold to New South Wales and Victoria. One farmer on South Australia's West Coast even had 22 Lutz strippers. In 1905, Theodor and Georg Jansen took over the business from the Lutz brothers, soon expanding the business. They submitted a 1907 patent for “an improved plough share and means for attaching it to the plough foot”. As cars arrived in the Eudunda area, they expanded into servicing motor vehicles.
In 1909, Johannes Berthold (J.B.) Reimann started his apprenticeship as blacksmith with J.T. Jansen in Eudunda. In 1951, Johannes and Leslie Reimann bought the Jansen Brothers business, renaming it J.B. Reimann and Son Holdings. While under contract in 1960 to produce farm fuel storage tanks for oil companies, J.B. Reimann grabbed the chance to create large commercial and industrial underground storage tanks carrying 800 to 180,000 litres. The difficulty in getting machinery to roll and bend the thick material led to it creating its own sheet metal and plate curver. The curving machines became a best-selling brand in Australia.
Reinmann Manufacturing became a world leader in producing turnkey pipework. In 1975, J.B. Reimann met demand from Western Australian oil companies by opening a factory in the Perth subrub of Jandakot. Two years later, the company was bought by Emco Wheaton, an Ontario, Canada-based company specialising in equipment for the petroleum industry. Third generation family member Les Reimann stayed on as consultant.
The company continued to work on projects including the Regency-to-Pym pipeline, the Kangaroo Creek Dam upgrade and the Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme. In 2013, Reimann Manufacturing won its first interstate pipeline contract in Geehi ,New South Wales, woking on the the Snowy Hydro project with Leed.
