Company Spotlight: SCHAEFER Elevator Components

SCHAEFER Elevator Components Inc. is the Canadian segment of SCHAEFER International. Headquartered in Surrey, British Columbia, it is part of the larger SCHAEFER GmbH founded in 1964 by Wolfgang Schaefer. The Canadian branch has been selling the company’s push buttons and fixtures since it opened in 2012. It has recently begun manufacturing its products in Canada.

Benedikt Thoma, vice president, gave your author a tour of SCHAEFER’s large booth at the Canadian Elevator Contractors Association (CECA) expo (p. 164). He explained the mid-range and premium buttons the company displayed there have a “unique” feature. Indeed, your author had never seen it: after popping a button’s faceplate off, a screw(s) can be turned to switch between several shades of border LED lighting. Up to 30 on-site-changeable color combinations are available. Their installation is simplified thanks to self-reversing polarity, self-adjusting voltage with multi-volt LEDs and two contacts as standard.

There are 250 SCHAEFER employees around the world, mostly stationed at the company’s branches, also in Germany, Spain, Italy and China. Its products are in operation in more than 120 countries. Its other products include bus systems, wiring, touchscreen displays and illumination, all for the elevator industry.