Kaercher Futuretech

Kaercher Futuretech is the defence and civil protection arm of Alfred Kaercher SE and Co. KG, the cleaning equipment group founded in 1935. The connection is not incidental. The line traces back to 1959, when Kaercher developed a decontamination high pressure cleaner, and a dedicated military and civil protection department followed in the late 1970s. In 2005 that department was carved out as an independent subsidiary, and in 2011 it moved into purpose-built premises at Schwaikheim near Stuttgart housing development, production, repair, quality control, training and service under one roof. Roughly 135 to 160 people work there.

The business is organised around deployable infrastructure rather than weapons. Four core areas run through everything: CBRN decontamination, mobile water supply, mobile catering and field camp systems, with portable shelters and specialised containers alongside them.

Decontamination is where the parent company's high pressure and burner technology shows most clearly. The TEP 90 is a containerised, crane-equipped decontamination system carried on an 8x8 cross-country truck and designed to work close to contaminated troops. The MPDS and MPDS 2 are diesel-driven multi-purpose units that deliver cold water, hot water to 80 degrees, superheated steam to 140 degrees and dry steam to 210 degrees from a single machine, at deliberately low water consumption. Around those sit cold and hot water pressure washers, pressure spray devices, application modules for decontamination chemicals, hot water and hot gas modules, vacuum decontamination and spray extraction modules, thermal aerosol generators, and the decontamination and cleaning agents themselves. Systems are supplied as containers, module sets, trailers and platforms for people, equipment, vehicles and buildings.

Water supply covers the full chain from a dirty source to a filled bottle. Mobile ultrafiltration plants strip particles, bacteria and viruses from fresh water, while reverse osmosis units handle brackish, salt and chemically contaminated raw water. Output ranges from about 200 litres an hour on the lightest portable plant up to 15,000 litres an hour on the largest containerised system. The range extends to drinking water filling and bottling plants, salt-to-chlorine chlorination systems, raw and drinking water tanks with distribution kit, and water analysis sets.

Catering is built from burner systems, cooking modules and combi steamers that can be assembled into kitchen trailers and kitchen containers, plus the KRR 50 modular rapid response kitchen for locations with no infrastructure at all. Field camp systems bring those pieces together with heating, air conditioning, sanitary units, showers and laundry to stand up a working camp, and the portable shelter system offers a lighter modular alternative for accommodation, catering, sanitation and hygiene. Specialised containers based on standard ISO shells are configured as workshops, supply units and technical spaces.

Customers are armed forces and civil protection and disaster control agencies. Because the equipment tends to be deployed a long way from a depot, the company sells logistical support, spares and training worldwide alongside the hardware, and that service side is a stated part of the offer rather than an afterthought.