Suhner Manufacturing Inc. is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

Otto H. Suhner, president of Suhner Holdings, said his great-grandfather owned the electrical cable and wire rope company in Brugg, Switzerland, but lost majority in 1908 when it became a public corporation. Six years later, in 1914, Otto Suhner Sr. decided to re-enter the wire business, manufacturing flexible shaft drives to transmit rotary power.

Suhner was the first Swiss company to open a manufacturing plant in Georgia. Groundbreaking for the first plant occurred in 1976 at a location on Shorter Industrial Boulevard in Rome. Production began in January 1977.

A few years earlier, young Otto H. Suhner had been working in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He found his way to Emory University in Atlanta for some specialized management courses where he made friends with Georgia Power executive Andy Speed. The utility executive told Suhner that if he ever decided to open a plant in the U.S. to call him, and that’s precisely what happened.

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