History
Since 1745 JDN has been manufacturing lifting equipment, now in the seventh generation.
In 1745 our ancestor Johann Diederich Neuhaus was found worthy to be listed as an "industrialist" in the "Sprockhoevelschen Factory Register" and to be accepted in a kind of "Commercial Co-Operative". We have been manufacturing "JDN Hoists" ever since and are now in the seventh generation.
At first we mainly produced jacks with wooden shanks and no carter wanted to travel without these jacks because of the terrible road conditions and the continuous wheel and axle damages.
We still manufacture jacks today but many basic principles have changed. The "Significant Date" for this was in 1952 when we had the idea to put a pneumatic motor to a so far manually operated pulley block.
Main customer of our pneumatic hoists was the coal mining industry where a product has to be robust and reliable if it wants to prove itself.
Towards the end of the 60`s we developed special pneumatic hoists for industrial applications: the JDN Air Hoists "PROFI" series. They can be used wherever there is a danger of explosion or where loads have to be moved very sensitively. For the ship building industry we developed a "PROFI" with a carrying capacity of 100 t.
As the first company in the material handling industry we received the Certificate for Quality Assurance in 1991. In the same year we widened our delivery programme to become a universal supplier of complete crane installations.
In 1998 we launched the compact air hoist of the mini series.
Johann Diederich II.
(25.9.1813 – 18.12.1883)
Under his leadership the business made great progress. During the middle of the19th century manufacturing industries grew rapidly and sales to steel works, railroads and the marine industry all around the globe increased. During this time the winch maker kept faith in his products for which a specialised knowledge and a high degree of skill was required to provide equipment of the necessary strength and robustness.
J. Diederich Neuhaus manufactured winches for the locks at the river Ruhr and for the many horse driven carriages. But he also manufactured winches for the railroads which gained importance day by day as wagons had to be lifted, rails aligned and goods moved. Every year he also manufactured more and more winches for the arduous conditions found in the underground coalmines.
To manufacture a new winch has always been an art but now in times of technical progress in the mechanised age, additional demands were made of the winches. Not only in the manner of construction but also in the carrying capacities required: 1 ton, 2 tons, 5 tons, 20 tons. The material had to satisfy the highest standards. Therefore it was no wonder that the most important parts of a winch were still forged by hand in the Neuhaus smithy despite the technical progress in the remaining processes.
J. Diederich II was - as far as our records show -was the first winch blacksmith in the family who looked much further forward than his ancestors in that he encouraged his highly talented son Carl to study engineering at the academy in the city of Charlottenburg. His father hoped that Carl one day would "make something" out of the workshop. However " as man proposes, God disposes" as we say in our country. Lieutenant Carl died in the war in 1870. But fortunately three sons had learned the art of a winch blacksmith. Carl had fallen, the youngest son died before he became a master. Consequently Louis Neuhaus, the third son now took over the winch factory of his father.