Showing 2022 companies
Company Headquarters: Germany Founded: 1864 Workforce: ~800 Company Working: VSM AG (VSM) is one of the leading manufacturers of high-quality coated abrasives worldwide. It offers abrasives for numerous applications including fittings, tools, vehicles and car bodies, mountings, furniture, stainless steel, and plant and tank construction. The company operates in around 70 countries.
Company Headquarters: Pennsylvania, US Founded: 1946 Workforce: ~50 Company Working: Schaffner Manufacturing Company, Inc. (Schaffner) manufactures flap wheels which include custom-made flap wheels, arbor holes, contoured flap wheels for specific shapes, non-woven flap wheels for cosmetic or satin finishing, mini flap wheels, and interleafed flap wheels to cushion the feel or reduce loading. The company also provides buffing wheels and buffing compounds for specialized applications across a wide range of end-use industries such as automotive and transportation, aerospace & defense, and furnishing.
sia Abrasives is a Swiss specialist in flexible abrasives with 150 years of history. It was historically ranked among the world's top three suppliers of flexible abrasives. Since 2008 it has been the Bosch Group's centre of excellence for sanding within the Power Tools division. Its portfolio spans: - coated abrasives (paper, film and cloth backings); - non-woven "fleece" abrasives; - foam abrasives; - a smaller range of bonded products. These are sold as complete sanding systems rather than as commodity sheets. The company targets demanding surface-finishing applications in automotive OEM and refinish, aerospace, furniture and building interiors, metal fabrication, watches and jewellery, wind power and marine. It differentiates on three things: application engineering, customer training (through its own training centre since 1986), and process automation, including a 2023 investment-led partnership with robotic-grinding specialist FerRobotics. Inside Bosch, sia supplies the industrial and trade channels under its own brand. It also leverages Bosch's global logistics, manufacturing and sales infrastructure, which gives it scale that independent mid-sized rivals lack. --- **What the company does.** sia Abrasives develops, manufactures and distributes abrasives and customer-specific system solutions for producing finished surfaces. Its current recruitment material describes its products as refining the surfaces of watches, cars, aircraft and designer furniture (Bosch/sia job postings, 2026). Abrasives are a classic consumable. They wear out in use, so revenue is recurring and tied to customers' production volumes rather than to capital-equipment cycles. **Company's own description.** Bosch has published no standalone annual report since FY2008. The most recent self-description comes from the corporate website and Bosch-issued recruitment text. sia presents itself as an abrasives specialist with industrial expertise. It says it understands customers' process steps and can supply the right sanding solution for any material. It describes its offer as complete sanding systems tailored to specific applications, turning sanding into "surface technology" (sia Abrasives Inc. USA, IWF Atlanta 2026 exhibitor profile, paraphrased). **Business and revenue model.** **Value-chain position.** sia is a mid-stream converter-manufacturer: 1. It buys mineral grain (aluminium oxide, silicon carbide, ceramic grain), resins, backings (paper, film, cloth) and foams. 2. Its own "maker" lines coat the grain onto backings to produce jumbo rolls. The Maker 5 plant in Frauenfeld was commissioned in 2012. 3. The jumbo rolls are converted into finished formats. Conversion was relocated in part to Goleniów, Poland in 2017. 4. Finished goods are distributed through Bosch's logistics network, using the IDC in Worms, Germany since 2016. **Customer types.** 1. Industrial OEMs: automotive body-in-white and paint shops, aerospace, furniture and panel manufacturers, metal fabricators, turbine and wind-blade makers. 2. Trade professionals: auto-body refinishers, carpenters, painters and decorators, flooring and parquet installers. 3. Distributors and dealers: industrial distributors and refinish paint distributors. Examples include JJS Canada and Abrasives Warehouse in the UK. **End-markets served (from sia's industry pages).** - Aerospace - Automotive - Building interior - General fabrication - Furniture production - Fixtures and fittings - Containers - Cutlery - Bus and trucks - Surgery (medical instruments) - Rail - Fibre optics - Windows and doors - Casting and forging - Glass - Kitchens - Leather - Marine and shipbuilding - Machines and systems - Motors and drives - Parquet - Panels - Tubes and profiles - Sports equipment - Coils and sheet metal - Stamped and shaped parts - Stone - Turbines - Watches and jewellery - Rollers and cylinders - Tools - Wind power **Historical revenue mix by application (last disclosed, about 2007).** About one-third came from furniture and interior fittings. About one-quarter each came from metal and from body repair / automotive refinish. The remainder, roughly one-sixth (derived), came from other applications including plastics and coatings (Moneycab interview with Peter Schifferle, 2007). **Independent characterisation.** sia is best understood as a premium, application-engineering-led abrasives brand. It is too small to compete with 3M or Saint-Gobain on breadth, but it is technically differentiated in fine finishing: automotive refinish, lacquer and wood, and precision metal. Under Bosch it has shifted from an independent growth story to a captive industrial brand. Bosch's power-tool channel carries mass-market "Bosch"-branded accessories, while sia retains the industrial and professional trade. The strategic logic is a sanding system: tool plus abrasive plus dust extraction plus automation. Bosch alone can assemble that system across tool and consumable.
Unlock Verified Contacts
Access verified employee contacts
Decision-maker information to support your sales, lead generation, and business development. 5 users, 5,500 credits a month with rollover, and one credit per contact email.
Powering the world's best teams.
From next-gen startups to established enterprises.
Trusted by forward-thinking businesses
for data-driven intelligence