Hettich is marking ten years in Sri Lanka, a decade in which the German fittings manufacturer has established a growing presence in the local market. Its first Experience Centre in the country, opened in Colombo 7 a year ago, is part of that expanding presence. Dr Andreas Hettich, the company’s fourth-generation head and Chairman of the Hettich Group Advisory Board, credits the decade of growth to an approach Hettich applies in every smaller market it enters: finding the right long-term partner rather than being the first to move.
“We have very long-term partnerships around the world,” Dr Hettich says. “Some of them have lasted as long as 50 years.” The company has applied the same model to Sri Lanka, formalised in 2025 when it named Delmege, a local conglomerate with its own 175-year history, as the country’s distributor.
Why Delmege
Andre Eckholt, Managing Director – Hettich India, SAARC, Middle East & Africa, explains, “The first and most important thing when we’re appointing partners is that we share the same values, the same understanding of how to do business,” he says. “We don’t believe in quick wins.”
Delmege’s appeal, he explains, was a domestic conglomerate with “a huge brand trust and a huge network,” particularly among the carpenters, architects, and interior designers who decide what goes into a project. Eckholt frames the goal less as winning shelf space than as winning their trust, and Hettich chose Delmege because the brand held the same values and the same ambition to lead the market.
One Global Manufacturing Standard
Founded in 1888, Hettich has been run by four generations of engineers, who still design and build the company’s assembly machines in-house rather than buying them, which Dr Hettich says keeps quality consistent worldwide. “Wherever you visit a Hettich factory, it will look and operate just like its siblings across the world. Every factory operates under the Hettich standard and process,” he says.
Hettich produces more than a million products a day across eight countries, including five factories in India, which has served as its hub for the region for the past 13 years. The Indian operation, Dr Hettich says, is fully automated and requires minimal human presence on the shop floor. When a new product line is introduced, the company prefers to build a new factory to accommodate it.
“We have some standard process like stamping or injection molding where you just design the new tool, not the new machine,” Dr Hettich says. “But assembly lines are usually done from scratch for a new product.”
A Market in Transition
Sri Lanka’s furniture and interior fittings industry has grown more organised over the past decade, according to Eckholt, though it remains dominated by smaller, independent original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). He expects this to consolidate in the years ahead as modular kitchens and modular furniture become standard in more households, bringing improvements in quality alongside gradual reductions in cost through greater economies of scale.
Consumer expectations are shifting too. Eckholt points to the growing number of Sri Lankans travelling abroad, particularly to Australia, as a source of new design influences finding their way back into local homes, along with rising buying power. With the broader economy now improving after years of recovery, Eckholt says “the timing is right for Hettich to deepen its presence and support the market’s next phase of growth.”
Designing Ahead of the Curve
Hettich’s approach to product development tries to recognise as well as create trends. “We try to be in front of the curve,” Dr Hettich says. “We don’t so much follow a customer’s needs so much as design their needs.” The company studies global megatrends to anticipate how people will live decades from now, rather than reacting to demand as it appears.
For one, urbanisation is shrinking the average living space, pushing Hettich towards smart storage solutions that make use of every square metre. Individualisation, meanwhile, is pushing towards products built on one shared base, such as a hidden drawer runner system, but offered in different colours, shapes and materials, letting customers express their own taste. Hettich’s SpinLines range, which allows entire rooms to rotate and transform, turning a bedroom into a workspace within the same footprint, is an example of this.
Hettich’s headquarters also sits within 50 kilometres of several global kitchen manufacturers, a cluster Eckholt calls “the Silicon Valley of the kitchen industry.” This lets Hettich work directly alongside those manufacturers as an innovation partner, while keeping its research and development entirely in-house.
Completing the Kitchen: Blaupunkt
Most of Hettich’s products are meant for modular kitchens, where standalone appliances break the aesthetic and function a fitted kitchen is meant to achieve. The company is now bringing Blaupunkt, a German brand specialising in built-in kitchen appliances, to Sri Lanka to help solve that problem.
Dr Hettich adds, Blaupunkt brand of appliances was chosen because it was “a good fit in terms of values and quality” to Hettich’s own products.
Built to Last
Hettich products are typically made from steel, which Dr Hettich notes can be recycled endlessly without losing quality, and designed to outlast the furniture they go into. Manufacturing is powered in part by the company’s own solar panels, with a notably high share of green energy used in markets like India.
That same long-term thinking extends to the trade itself. Hettich’s Poddar Wood Working Institute in India has trained and certified more than 50,000 carpenters over the past two decades, alongside broader support for schools and community sports clubs in the areas where the company operates.
“We are not here for the next quarter or the next decade,” Dr Hettich says. “At 138 years in business, I am the fourth generation to lead the company.” Hettich will eventually see a fifth and sixth generation of leadership, and the same approach that brought it to Sri Lanka a decade ago looks set to guide the company for years to come.