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The family-owned BLS Industries group has deep roots in which entrepreneurship, creativity and innovativeness have been handed down from generation to generation, and today the twelfth generation of the Spånberg family are active in the group.
Thanks to dedicated investment in product development and a consistent strategy for new acquisitions, BLS Industries is today one of the principal manufacturers and suppliers of sanitaryware, with a number of strong brands.
The product which has contributed to a large extent to the success of BLS Industries, and which is most closely connected with the group, is the floor gully, a product which is nowadays a given in every home. 1945 saw the purchase of Sjöbo foundry, which originally manufactured pipe components.
Ten years later, the then CEO Bengt Spånberg started a collaboration with building contractor Harry Karlsson, who had been over in the USA and absorbed the latest about the new floor gullies. He called his idea Purus (Latin for ‘clean’).
Sjöbo foundry initially manufactured the Purus floor gully in cast iron, and at the end of the 1970s switched to plastic. Today, BLS Industries is a market leader in the manufacture of floor gullies in Sweden, producing around 10,000 plastic floor gullies per week.
Over the years, the BLS Industries range has broadened from floor gullies to include, for example, indoor waste systems, stainless steel interiors and sanitaryware, designed floor gullies, as well as the acquisition and start-up of sales companies in the Nordic region and Great Britain.
The road to the operations we see today can be traced back as far as the 17th century in Lilla Spånhult in Småland, where the Spånberg family originates from. They worked for several generations as blacksmiths and craftsmen, among other professions.
During the rise of industrialisation, at the beginning of the 20th century, the then CEO Sven Spånberg started large-scale, industrial manufacturing with the acquisition of the Norrahammar and Ankarsrum foundries. In 1910, Norrahammar and Ankarsrum foundries launched the first enamelled cast-iron bathtub and, for a while, bathtubs from Ankarsrum were market leaders during the Swedish public housing boom.
Other big sellers were the Viking stove and the first electric stove, which was launched in 1947.