• 40 Years of Commitment to Peters: Bye Bye, Mr Circuit Board

    Managing Director Ralf Schwartz thanks Jürgen Nitsche in the Peters garden for decades of loyalty. The self-employed sales representative has been flying the flag of the Kempen-based company for 25 years. Managing Director Brigitte Schwartz and Benjamin Alfes, Assistant to the Management, joined in.
Photo: Axel Küppers
    Peters has now said good-bye to its long-serving sales representative Jürgen Nitsche who has recently started his well-deserved retirement. The 68-year-old expert in printed circuit boards has been selling Peters ink systems and casting compounds for almost 25 years. “My relationship with Peters, however, has grown over 40 years. It all began in 1982 when the cooperation of the then Technical Manager Rüdiger Dietrich was taken up,” remembers Jürgen Nitsche, who comes from the Harz region and lives in Seesen in the Goslar district.
    The expert worked for the research and development department of the then leading PCB manufacturer Fuba Hans Kolbe & Co. This company in Gittelde/Harz, where his father Günter had already been working, producing the first printed circuit board in 1957 in the Fuba main factory in Bad Salzdetfurth, started to introduce the first printed circuit board in Germany together with the company Ruwel (incorporated in 1956). In 1959, large-scale production was launched at Fuba in Gittelde.
    Almost at the same time, Werner Peters from the Lower Rhine Area developed the first inks for PCB production. This marked the beginning of the era of printed circuit board production in Europe. In the 1980s, Peters was the main supplier of solder resists to Fuba. “At its peak, Peters supplied over 100 tonnes a year,” reports Ralf Schwartz, Managing Director of Peters Jürgen Nitsche set up his own sales and consulting company Semetec Leiterplattentechnologie in 1997 and remained loyal to Peters – also thanks to a call from Rüdiger Dietrich. “We always developed solutions together for our customers,” says Jürgen Nitsche. Given his knowledge and experience in PCB technology, his scope of activities went far beyond that of a sales representative.
    Managing Director Ralf Schwartz thanks Jürgen Nitsche in the Peters garden for decades of loyalty. The self-employed sales representative has been flying the flag of the Kempen-based company for 25 years. Managing Director Brigitte Schwartz and Benjamin Alfes, Assistant to the Management, joined in.
    Photo: Axel Küppers

    The all-rounder introduced Peters products to industry in the entire German-speaking region north of the River Main, took care of technical problems right up to complex machine issues and, as a service provider, always ensured smooth processes. It was not unusual that himself, company founder Werner Peters and Rüdiger Dietrich put their heads together intensively when a technical problem had to be cleared off the table. Jürgen Nitsche was able to explain the further developments of solder resists and conformal coatings in the field like no one else, be it the ink systems for PCB production such as carbon conductive inks or conformal coating systems for flat assemblies under most extreme conditions such as frost, high temperature or humidity. Whether as a speaker at numerous training seminars where he presented Peters’ invention of peelable solder resists, for example, or at the world’s leading trade fair productronica with international audience speaking about innovations in PCB production: he provided valuable support based on his many years of experience.

    It was almost a symbiotic relationship; there was always value added for the customers,” says Ralf Schwartz. For the sporty Jürgen Nitsche who still plays tennis today, it goes without saying that he personally said goodbye in Kempen to many trusted Peters employees. In the future, the busy sales representative wishes to spend more with his family that includes, besides his wife and two children, four grand-children. He is also busy in politics, having been elected 2nd Deputy Mayor of Seesen in the last local elections.
    In future, Friedrich J. Gerecht will take over his sales field service directly from the Peters headquarters. Trained for the profession of an industrial clerk by Peters, he has been working at Hooghe Weg 13 for almost ten years.
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