Windmöller & Hölscher Brand Guidelines: The Lengerich Paper Bag Makers Who Turned to Machines

A bag business that kept the machines.

Windmöller & Hölscher, which goes by W&H, began in 1869 in Lengerich, in Westphalia, founded by Gottfried Windmöller and Hermann Hölscher. German Wikipedia says the partners set out to make paper bags and folded paper capsules for pharmacists. W&H began as a maker of packaging, not of machines.

The machines came out of the bag business. The company says Hölscher patented the first cone bag machine with a printing device in 1877, for its own production; German Wikipedia says commercial machine building began a year later. In 1888, the company says, it developed a stand-alone printing press for paper bags. By 1892 it says a third of turnover came from machine sales and two-thirds from its own bags. The first overseas agency opened in Sweden in 1900, and in 1913 W&H stopped making bags altogether to concentrate on machinery for sale.

The range then widened. The MATADOR bag machine followed in 1914. Paper sack machines came next, dated 1928 by the company and 1927 by German Wikipedia. In 1930 the company launched a stepped-end sack tuber, which it calls the basis for today’s paper bag technology.

Printing grew alongside. The company claims two world firsts: the OLYMPIA bridge flexo press of 1948 and a central cylinder flexographic press of 1954, which it says created the basis for today’s flexographic printing. The MERKUR extended its gravure portfolio in 1953. Plastics arrived in the 1960s, with a valve sack machine for pasted plastic sacks in 1966 and the start of blown film line development in 1967, the birth of the extrusion business. The subsidiary GARANT was founded in 1973, and in 1979 form-fill-seal lines and cast film lines joined the range.

Family partners, managing partners and two factories.

W&H describes itself as a family company. In a press release of 29 October 2020 it named Adelheid Windmöller as a personally liable partner, speaking for all shareholders. German Wikipedia gives the legal form as Windmöller & Hölscher SE & Co. KG. The company also records that she set up a charitable foundation for education and training in 2015.

The chief executive’s post has changed hands twice since then. That same release said Jürgen Vutz, chief executive since 2001 and a managing partner, would move to the supervisory board from 1 January 2021 and be followed by Peter Steinbeck, also a managing partner; PrintWeek India reported the same change. Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing reported in August 2019 that Falco Paepenmüller, at the company since 2007 and most recently head of its extrusion unit, had become chief technology officer, a new post. EUWID reported on 15 November 2023 that he would become chief executive from 1 January 2024. The company’s website now lists him as CEO and CTO, with Philipp Ecken as finance chief and Sascha Witt as sales chief.

On manufacturing, W&H gives specifics. It says it has been headquartered in Lengerich since its foundation, that it develops and produces its machines there on 120,000 square metres, and that in 2005 it added a second, smaller production site in Prostějov, in the Czech Republic. The same year it founded BSW Machinery, a specialist in machinery for woven materials, which the company says was fully integrated in 2017 as W&H Machinery.

The group today has about 3,400 employees, according to the company, which says its machines are in use in more than 130 countries. In 2018 W&H and Haver & Boecker set up AVENTUS, a joint venture in machinery for packaging free-flowing bulk materials. The company consolidated its training in the W&H Academy in 2017; German Wikipedia says this took effect on 1 July and absorbed a training company set up in 2004.

Its range now falls into three areas, as German Wikipedia and the company both describe: extrusion, printing and converting. On film, the company offers VAREX II and OPTIMEX II for blown film, with FILMEX for cast film.

Towers, barrels and trade fairs.

Machinery for plastics film, sheet and recycling is sold to plant owners and engineers, and its makers build their image on the machines themselves. The tallest of them is the blown-film tower, where a shining bubble of film rises several storeys before it is flattened and wound. Wide cast lines and winders offer the same kind of picture lying down: long, level and glossy, with the finished roll as the closing shot.

Close-ups supply the colour. Extruder barrels, guards and control cabinets are often finished in brand colours, which makes the livery of the line one of the few visual assets a maker fully owns. Thermoforming makers favour the end of the line, with formed trays stacking up as they leave the machine. Makers of bottles and preforms show rows of finished shapes.

Recycling has added its own set of pictures. Pellets in glass jars, shown before and after processing, turn an industrial step into something that can sit on a table at a trade stand. Bales of used film do the opposite job, showing the raw material as it arrives. Both images need careful handling, because they suggest a result that the words around them should state plainly and with a source.

The category’s main stages are its trade fairs, among them K in Düsseldorf, NPE in the United States, Plastpol in Poland and Fakuma in Germany. Stands there often feature running machinery. For a designer, this is a field where the identity has to work on a steel guard, a touch screen and a technical data sheet as well as on a web page. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker and leaves the rest out.

Two surnames, three letters and a lot of capitals.

The name has two forms. The two founders’ surnames, joined by an ampersand, are cut down in everyday use to three characters, and the website is at wh.group.

The other strong habit is typographic. The company sets its machine names in capitals, and some are built from words: it says VAREX stands for VARiable EXtrusion. MATADOR, OLYMPIA and MERKUR show how long the practice of naming machines has run, and ALPHAFLEX and FILMEX carry it on today. Its slogan is “Passion for Innovation,” and it groups its messages under coined labels: GREENOVATION for sustainability activities since 2009, and PACKAGING 4.0 for digitalisation since 2015. Its history page sets out its record as a list of firsts, each one the company’s own claim, and it calls itself a world leader in machinery for flexible packaging.

W&H also presents itself through running machines. It marked its 150th anniversary in 2019 by opening what it calls the largest technology centre for machinery in the flexible packaging market. paper-world, carrying a company release dated 16 September 2025, said W&H would go to K 2025 in Düsseldorf with a 1,100 square metre stand in Hall 17, where the VAREX II and the ALPHAFLEX flexo press would run demonstrations three times a day, and would hold an in-house EXPO with nine running machines at its 10,000 square metre Technology Center in Lengerich. On 2 November 2026 its news page announced a new FILMEX cast film line at that centre.

For a design guide, Windmöller & Hölscher shows how a company can keep its founders’ names for more than 150 years while everyday use shortens them to three characters. Compare Reifenhäuser, another German family company in film extrusion, and Haver & Boecker, its partner in AVENTUS. For this guide we use press blue, sack white and kraft with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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