König Brand Guidelines: Helmut König’s 1966 One-Man Works and the Rex Divider of Graz

A baker’s son at the Technical University in Graz.

König’s history, as the company tells it, begins in a bakery. Its founder, Helmut König, came from a family of bakers in Hartberg, in the Austrian state of Styria, and the company says he designed his first machines to make the hard work in the bakery easier for his parents. In 1966, while studying at the Technical University in Graz, he founded Maschinenfabrik Helmut König as a one-man company.

The product that gave the business its identity came soon after. In 1969, the company says, production moved to Graz-Andritz and the first prototype of the Rex Automat was built. Patenting and series production followed in 1971 and 1972, together with the opening of a newly built plant in Graz. The Rex is a dough divider and rounder. In the company’s description of its Classic Rex, dough goes into a hopper, a pusher presses it into openings in a weighing drum, and an oscillating plate rounds the pieces.

The company widened from there. It says it opened a second Graz site for oven production in 1980, and in 1989 it formed a joint venture with CELBA in Celldömölk, Hungary, which is now its subsidiary Koenig Kft. Sales companies and subsidiaries followed: Koenig Inc. in the United States and König Laminiertechnik at Dinkelsbühl, Germany, in 2005; Koenig BV in the Netherlands in 2006; and Koenig Deutschland in 2008. In 2007 the company marked the delivery of its 5,000th Rex divider and rounder. Italy came next, with an office in 2015 and, in 2017, a production facility for turn-key projects.

Fortuna, Vulganus and a group.

König is privately held, and the Austrian company register shows by whom. The register entry for König Maschinen Gesellschaft m.b.H. of Graz names a single shareholder, the Helmut König Privatstiftung, a private foundation carrying the founder’s name, with the entry dated November 2018. It lists Hannes Stelzer as managing director since November 2023. British Baker named Wolfgang Staufer as chief executive in January 2019.

Since 2018 the company has also grown by purchase. It says it expanded its Austrian production that year by purchasing a metal casting firm, Metallguss Katz. A further step came in January 2019. Fortuna, a bakery equipment maker founded in 1887 and based at Bad Staffelstein in Upper Franconia, filed for bankruptcy in October 2018, and König acquired the business out of insolvency, British Baker reported on 7 January 2019. A new company, Fortuna Maschinen GmbH, took on the assets, trademarks and patents, along with 90 staff, 17 of them apprentices. A company release that month called the purchase an asset deal. König said the two brands would operate independently, and that the purchase would widen its range for artisan bakeries.

The second purchase came from Finland. On 1 July 2022 the listed Finnish group Aspo announced that its subsidiary Leipurin had sold its manufacturing business Vulganus to König Maschinen GmbH. Vulganus, based at Nastola, makes spiral systems for proofing, cooling and freezing. Baking+Biscuit International reported that it had worked with such systems for more than 40 years and that the Vulganus brand would continue independently.

The group has since been drawn closer together. The company says the König, Fortuna and Vulganus brands first presented a joint group presence at iba in 2025. That year it also began cooperating with Abendschön Maschinenbau on robotics and automation, opened a service branch in the Swiss canton of Aargau, and set up König Nordic Oy at Lahti to serve Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Its Eco Twin Plus EC, shown at Südback in October 2026, brings König and Fortuna technology together in one machine for the first time, it says.

The range now runs from spiral mixers and the Herkules bowl hoist through the Rex system, dough sheeting and roll lines to bread scoring, ovens and cooling. The Rex family is sorted into S, M and L series. Ovens carry names such as Roto Passat and MDI Stratos, and sheeting lines the Artisan name.

Design and documentation.

Bakery equipment makers sell machines, but what they show is mostly dough. The picture language of the trade is familiar: dough sheets gliding along white belts, laminated croissant lines, rack ovens opening on golden trays, deck ovens with stone soles, and flour-dusted hands beside stainless machines.

The test bakery is part of that presentation. Rademaker invites customers to its Technology Centre in Culemborg to try their products with its technologists and test bakers, and it runs an Experience Centre near Chicago; Sveba Dahlen says its Bakery Innovation Centers let distributors and customers test its machines using their own recipes and ingredients, with master bakers on hand. In both cases the offer is to see a recipe run on the machine.

The calendar runs on trade fairs, and that is where the machines are seen working. iba, held in Düsseldorf in 2025, returns to Munich from 24 to 28 October 2027, its organiser says. At the 2025 show, World Bakers reported, a Glimek bread line was to be demonstrated live with dough several times a day. Sigep World meets in Rimini in January 2027, IBIE in Las Vegas in September 2028, and südback at Messe Stuttgart. Sirha Bake & Snack, where the old Europain web address now leads, is next in Paris in January 2028.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker: who founded it, who owns it, and where it says its machines are made. Company statements are given as company statements. Where a maker publishes no brand colours or typefaces, the palette and type here are our own interpretation.

A family name that means king.

König’s identity starts with its name. König is the German word for king, and rex is the Latin one, so the product the company is known for and its founder’s surname say the same thing in two languages. The website leans on the idea with the line “The Baker’s Crown” and pairs it with a colour claim, “The gold standard in red.” Its stylesheet uses a strong red more than any other colour; the company does not publish it as an official brand value.

The name also appears in several spellings, which is worth noting for anyone searching for the company. The website is headed König bakery machines and sets the name in capitals as KÖNIG in places. It uses Koenig Group for the wider business, and the web address is koenig-rex.com, which puts the machine and the maker side by side. The register name remains König Maschinen Gesellschaft m.b.H. It is a different business from Koenig & Bauer, the German printing press maker.

The company marks its age in its communications. Its presence at Südback in Stuttgart from 24 to 27 October 2026 ran under the motto “60 Years. Built Together.” It says it has delivered more than 63,000 machines and supplied more than 110 countries; those are its own figures. Another line, “Follow the dough,” also appears on the site.

It locates its group at Graz, the headquarters; Dinkelsbühl in Germany; Noordeloos in the Netherlands; Ashland, Virginia; Celldömölk in Hungary; Santa Maria di Zevio in Italy; and Nastola in Finland, with Fortuna at Bad Staffelstein. Its demonstration centre in Graz invites bakers to try their own recipes on the machines. The company says it opened a baking demonstration centre in 2004 and a new customer centre in 2010. Its 2019 release said Fortuna develops and manufactures machines for bread rolls, and the history page describes production in Graz, Italy and, through Metallguss Katz, at a casting firm in Austria.

For a design guide, König shows how a name can carry an identity when the product is a steel machine that few customers ever see outside a bakery: one word, one colour and a crown. Compare Rondo, the Burgdorf maker of dough sheeters, and FRITSCH, another maker of bakery lines. For this guide we use a red and a charcoal with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep König’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.