About the company – historical overview

The 1970's

Core industries started as a department in a very well established Israeli company called “Solel Bone”, which is a construction company that was owned by the Israeli employee’s society. The department’s duty was to make all of the factories owned by core industries work more efficiently, among them Vulcan’s factory. In order to execute their role the department had to learn the methods that were used in similar factories and companies around the world, especially in the United States and to implement those methods to all of Core’s factories.

In June 1970 the C.O.O of Core Mr. Yitshak Nagler went for a visit in G.B.C factory in America while searching for advanced knowledge. After his return he said “we knew its time to upgrade the technology, manufacturing methods, efficiency, cycle life and quality of the battery that is being made in Vulcan”.

In another visit Mr. Nagler had in the USA in the year 1973 he contacted one of the biggest battery companies in America at the time, Globe Union. In the same time period the American company decided to expand their reach to the international market as well. The connections led to that in the years 1973-1974 Globe Union became a full partner of Core in Vulcan Automotive. Yitshak Nagler became the chairman of the joined board that used to convene in Athens.

The connection with the American company led to a conclusion that the battery factory must be renewed in order to manufacture better and more reliable batteries, more efficiently and with more modern equipment, so Vulcan will be able to withstand the completion, quality and price against the imported batteries and to prepare to the significant grow the Israeli automotive market was supposed to experience. Another conclusion was that the new factory had to be built in a different location that the old factory from two reasons:

  1. Installing new equipment in a functioning factory will interfere with the production process and may cause losing customers.
  2. The employees in Vulcan’s factory were veterans in their respective roles and the union was strong and demanding and got the employees over privileges and unrealistic production capacity. Because of that the company wasn’t able to operate the melting oven 24 hours a day in order to recycle as much lead as possible and to successfully compete against imported batteries, which hardened on Vulcan and made the company not as efficient as it should have been. It was important to operate the melting oven 3 shifts a day in order to recycle as much lead as possible from old batteries. 

The new factory in Tefen industrial park.

In February of 1974 Mr. Danny Peled was named Vulcan’s new C.E.O. in that same year they started building Tefen industrial park in the northern district of Israel. Following that Vulcan decided to build their new factory in cooperation with Globe Union in the newly founded industrial park. In the end of that year the C.E.O of Vulcan recruited the engineer Daniel Cohen that had experience in the battery market to plan and be in charge of the building of the new factory.

The drawings were sent to the American company for inspection and they sent engineers and technicians to assist in this project. Because in the years 1975-1976 the building wasn’t yet ready it was decided to operate the new production line in a different location.

In the year 1977 the new equipment was assembled in the new factory in Tefen according to the plan and in the year 1978 the full production of batteries in the new factory begun, in the same year a new melting oven for recycling lead from old batteries started operating for 24 hours a day.

The factory was formally introduced in July 1979, and for the next four years only two companies operated in the Tefen Industrial park (both were owned by Core Industries).

Other than the regular difficulties of a new factory, especially a factory that operates new technology the factories suffered from the fact that they were far from any established settlements, so everything had to be bought and shipped to Tefen. After a while Vulcan started manufacturing plastic boxes for the batteries instead of purchasing boxes from plastic manufacturers.

 

In the year 1984 Mr. Balfour Kadrai was appointed as the C.E.O of Vulcan instead of Danny Peled, he continued in his role until the company was sold to Sonol Ltd in the year 1993.

In the year 2000 Meir Arnon purchased control over Vulcan and held it until the year 2011, during this period Vulcan implemented new technologies and continued developing and improving the batteries quality.