The brother and sister team of Mirko and Tatjana Filip are now leading the company, which was started in 1919 by their great-grandfather Vinzenz Filip. Even back then, the company specialized in the production and sales of brushes, cleaners and brooms for mills.
“The aim of the company founder was ‘to always deliver the best of the best,’” Tatjana Filip said. “This is what it says in the product catalog from 1923. We have maintained this claim over the years to this day.”
Filip specializes in the development, production and sales of cleaners for plansifter sieves. It manufactures and sells sieve cleaning brushes, sieve cleaners with studs and pan cleaners for all standard types of plansifters.
“The typical Filip shape — the triangular form — has proven to be highly efficient in daily application,” Tatjana Filip said.
Filip sells to individual mills as well as through a well-developed network of foreign representatives. It also supplies mill construction companies and large manufacturers of sieve cloths and frames.
Originally located in Zeitz of the former German Democratic Republic, the company moved to the former West Germany for political reasons. Martin Filip, Mirko and Tatjana’s grandfather, took over the business, eventually handing it over to their father, Dieter Filip.
In his 20 years leading the business, Dieter Filip developed the company’s top sellers and built it into a global player, said Mirko Filip. Sadly, Dieter Filip passed away at the beginning of April. Until shortly before his death, Dieter was available as a consultant to his children and advised them in product development and management.
"We miss our father painfully. Dieter was well-connected in the mill industry and had an incredible know-how with regard to sieve cleaning," Mirko Filip said. "He liked to pass on his extensive knowledge to us. My sister and I are going to continue the company in its fourth generation exactly in his spirit: competent, cooperative and always customer oriented."
High-quality and perfect workmanship are the cornerstones for Filip, Tatjana Filip said. Using high quality pays off in the mill, she said, because excellent sieve cleaning means no unnecessary machine downtimes.
Safety of its products is also important to Filip. For example, its sieve cleaning brush housings are made of polyurethane that is considered safe and intended to come into direct contact with food.
“The materials processed by us are resistant even under extreme temperature and humidity conditions and protect the sieves from sticking,” Mirko Filip said. “In addition, they are resistant to fats and enzymes.”
Filip works closely with its customers and is continually adapting its products to meet the latest requirements in the mills, Tatjana Filip said. For example, when the company became aware of the trend toward plansifter sieves without back wire, it designed the triangular-shaped “double cleaner with tongue.”
“This tilts and rotates in the sieve frame, cleaning the sieve mesh and the base of the sieve at the same time,” she said. “Since it was launched on the market, we have continued to develop and improve the product. It has become one of our best-selling products.”
Nylon is becoming increasingly popular as brushing material as opposed to natural hair, Tatjana Filip said, which is why all of Filip’s brushes are available with white and black nylon bristles.
“We want to make even greater use of the internet as a communication and sales channel,” he said. “In addition, we are adapting our internal business processes even more closely to the digital age.”
Due to growth in the last several years, including new large mill groups as customers and new distribution partners, Filip was in need of more space.
It has built a new 2,000-square-meter facility in Güetersloh, Germany, close to its prior headquarters. The facility features an office wing. including a recreation room for the staff; two production areas and a large warehouse for the storage of raw materials and finished products.
“Since we planned the entire building from scratch, we were able to optimally adapt all the rooms to our production and work processes,” Mirko Filip said. “The new building symbolizes our plans for the future: Growth!”
