The millers from Lake Constance: Starrag has been based in Rorschacherberg for almost a century now. Oskar Hoppe and Henri Levy (right) proudly presented the factory floor to wife Rösli and other family members in the 1920s.

Without them, certain ships would not travel, many planes would not get off the ground, and numerous power plants would not work reliably: There's plenty that's made possible thanks to the Starrag Group from Rorschacherberg in Switzerland. The group is known and valued not just by aeroplane manufacturers, shipbuilders and energy companies from all over the world, but also production experts from almost every sector. It's an astounding achievement – especially since it all began 125 years ago, with an automatic threading machine for the textile industry.

A gold medal in Toulouse! The trained businessman from France’s Upper Alsace region certainly couldn’t have dreamed of that, back when he was still selling machines to owners of world-renowned hand embroidery firms in the Swiss canton of St Gallen. As a newly naturalised Swiss citizen, Henri Levy was fascinated by the work of these embroidery firms; however, he disagreed with the laborious process of manual threading, which often had to be carried out by children. In 1897, at just 27 years old, the sales manager took over a locksmith’s workshop and became the inventor of a threading machine that he designed and built with his employees.