Press better

Squeezing the lovely juice from the fruit was a heavy, dirty and unpopular activity.

"The strong men who were best at the job were not so good at working. They preferred to sit in the pub with schnapps and beer," 

recalls Erich Rauch, who was in charge of technology at the time.

It was hard work, he says. In 1965, the Swiss company Bucher introduces a new hydraulic fruit press. The demonstration of this HP 5000 with its innovative filter-drainage system took place at the Zweifel juicing operation in Zurich. It goes without saying that Erich Rauch made sure he didn't miss out.

What he saw inspired him: where four men had had to work hard in the past, a single worker controlled the entire pressing process with a small control panel. It was fast and clean. And above all: the juice pressed with this machine was of higher quality. This investment was a very easy decision for the young management team. A few weeks later, the first juice flowed from one of the world's first "Bucher presses" in Rankweil.

Bucher's modern juice presses replaced muscle power with hydraulics. Rauch was one of the first users in the world.