Even a spinning wind turbine sometimes needs to stop. To that end, a quality braking system becomes a vital part of equipment used in many industries, and the experts at Dellner Bubenzer have been supplying those quality braking systems to a myriad of sectors for many years.
Before Dellner Bubenzer merged to become one company in 2019, both entities were involved in designing and manufacturing braking systems for vastly different businesses.
“Bubenzer, itself, was a brake supplier in ports, mining, steel, wind power, overhead cranes, and many general industries, and it actually was the top brand in the industry,” said Joel Cox, Dellner Bubenzer global sales director for wind. “And then, of course, Dellner was primarily known for braking in the large vessels and large ships where they need to stop, turn, and lock the drive train. Their braking was a lot different than Bubenzer’s braking. But when we merged together in 2019, it was nice to see the other side of the spectrum of different braking in the industry.”

Getting into Wind
With this merger and several acquisitions over the years, the company has found itself very active in the wind industry as Dellner Wind Solutions, according to Cox.
“We do pitch systems for the pitch control schemes, primarily hydraulic,” he said. “We also offer braking systems and rotor lock systems and locking devices for all different kinds of wind scenarios — whether it’s a rotor brake for the wind turbine or it’s the yaw braking systems for turbines or pitch systems. We’re involved in many of the OEMs and, of course, aftermarket as well.”
In addition to braking systems, the company offers couplings, too, according to Cox.
“We do quite a bit with couplings in many of our industries, and that’s something where we have a huge talent pool,” he said. “The other thing is in our braking, we have passive systems, which would be like fail safe braking. We also have active systems where they’re hydraulically activated. We can do any or all different scenarios. Braking is definitely at the forefront of our company, but we also are very involved in hydraulics for wind.”

Think Globally, Act Locally
Being such a large supplier to a very active market means Dellner Bubenzer must think globally but act locally, according to Cox.
“We’ve set up centers and locations in the hotspots in the industry, so, obviously, we have factories in Germany, the Czech Republic, India, and China,” he said. “But we also have our engineering resources more localized to where the business is. We try to be proactive in the market when we see certain things that are somewhat trending in the market or what people typically want. A lot of companies recently were coming to us asking, ‘We see what you’re doing with other OEMs; could we possibly be doing something better with your technology and your expertise in the industry?’ It’s nice when OEMs come to us when they are running into a roadblock.”
Dellner Bubenzer’s extensive portfolio has allowed the company to really service the wind industry, according to Cox. Three years ago, the company acquired Hydratech Industries, who was primarily in wind and already dealing with several large OEMs. In 2024, Dellner Bubenzer acquired Antec, a braking company in Spain whose business was about 70 percent wind. This acquisition turned a competitor into ally.
“Before the acquisition, sometimes we were battling one of our future-owned companies 50/50,” he said. “If we won 50 percent, then Antec maybe won 50 percent, so, overnight, we essentially won 100 percent of market share. That has allowed us to be a one-stop shop. If somebody’s looking for hydraulic power units or they’re looking for brake calipers or they’re looking for discs or couplings, now they can get it all from one place.”

More Market Penetration
The acquisition of Hydratech allowed Dellner Bubenzer to penetrate the market even more, according to Cox.
“They were very heavy with Siemens and with Vestas, so it allowed us to open up our portfolio to those brands where we maybe didn’t have penetration with them before as a customer,” he said. “If you look at the top 20 turbine OEMs, we’re probably on 95 percent of them in some way, shape, or form — even the Chinese brands.”
Over the years, Dellner Bubenzer has been very strategic and shrewd with the way it has grown, according to Cox.
“When I look at some of our competitors in the industry, you see companies buying up everything, and then you start to see where some of these companies we’re competing against start to fall away or they lose focus or they lose concentration on what their core values were and what they were good at,” he said. “One thing we have done very well is to know what our people are good at and what industries they’re good at or what capabilities they’re good at and keeping those people on in an increased talent pool. A lot of times, I’ll reach out to some of our hydraulic experts on our team from the Hydratech side because that’s all they’ve ever done.”

Increased Knowledge Base
The addition of hydraulics has given the company the ability to increase its knowledge base for the wind industry, according to Cox.
“From the Bubenzer side, a lot of times we were buying hydraulics from companies that did it well, so we never really had to understand the complete aspect of hydraulics,” he said. “So, purchasing a hydraulic company was a very smart thing for us because we’d lost projects because we were great in brakes, we were great in couplings, but we didn’t have the hydraulic side. We would have to buy that from another third-party company. Once we made that acquisition, it really opened up some major doors for us because that was a weakness, and we took that weakness and we’ve grown upon it.”
All of those multiple facilities and businesses around the world means a countless amount of manpower is available at a moment’s notice, according to Cox.
“It is good having enough people within our team that have experience, and there’s no way we could add it all up into years of service,” he said. “Many of our people were either technicians or engineers, and so we’ve got a real nice combined portfolio of staff and diverse backgrounds and walks of life.”

Aftermarket Opportunities
This includes even in the aftermarket when dealing with OEMs, according to Cox. OEMs will approach Dellner Bubenzer wanting to test new technology or a new brake lining material, even when they may be considered a competitor.
“We’ll test that, and we’ll give that kind of third-party feedback for them,” he said. “Our philosophy is definitely to be innovative and show why we are the best, but also, in the process of that, make some of these relationships long-term since we have been a player in many of our brands along the way for such a long time.”
Along with its journey to become a better supplier of quality braking systems and hydraulics to its customers, Cox said the company is also striving to be a greener company as well.
“There are offsets that we can do to try to make the industry better, not only for wind, but we’re using this same mentality for ports, for steel, for mining, and other industries that we’re in,” he said. “Part of that, too, is that some of the products that we developed are actually showing huge savings for customers.”

Larger Turbines
That innovation will become even more necessary over the next few years as turbines grow even larger, according to Cox. “We’re going to be doing a lot of development work with some of these OEMs behind the scenes on these 20-plus MW units,” he said. “What that’s doing to the industry is we don’t see as many turbines because they’re starting to get larger, but we definitely see that there’s some thought-provoking ideas of trying to scale up. So, hopefully, between gearbox and motors and brakes and some of the moving parts of these turbines, we’re doing it in a smart way to where we have some commonality between one brand and another. For us, we can start stocking equipment in a way that handles multiple brands vs. this brand uses this and that brand only uses that. It is definitely a different mentality that we’re using behind the scenes.”
In the meantime, Dellner Bubenzer will continue to offer the wind industry proven tested products, according to Cox. This will include making sure those customers know the quality that Dellner Bubenzer brings to the table to ensure their assets are running properly and efficiently.
“Many OEMs are trying to cut costs to try to win these projects, and it’s very hard for us, being primarily a European manufacturer, to get to these price levels while making sure they know about the bells and whistles that a lot of people want in this industry, or options they don’t find out about until it’s essentially too late, or they don’t find out about it until it’s 10 years into the aftermarket,” he said.
“My goal is hopefully to make people realize there are some nice features they could get that could be very, very helpful in the wind-turbine industry for avoiding problematic downtime in order to make their life better and hopefully get to a point where they only have to go up tower once a year.”
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