History

Falck-Schmidt has its beginning in 1906 when Sophus Falck started a Fire and Ambulance service in Copenhagen after his travels in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese war, where Sophus Falck was working in a field hospital.

Sophus youngest son Einer Sofus Falck-Schmidt started his own company E. Falck-Schmidt in 1934 to manufacture and do maintenance on all the vehicles his father company was operating. This included fire engines, ambulances and recovery and support vehicles.

Later on, the company also started building fire engines and ambulances to deliver to FALCK. Around the early 1960s, at which time Einar’s 3 sons also had come on board in the company, the company transitioned into building their own man-lift vehicles. Building recovery vehicles has also lead to work for and deliver such heavy recovery vehicles/cranes for the Danish armed forces (Army and Navy) .The company furthermore transitioned into doing maintenance on The Royal Danish army’s vehicles. More than 1000 M113 FOV were retrofitted and overhauled completely. This included maintenance on vehicle hull, engines, gearboxes, finaldrives, wiring harnesses etc.

Jørgen Falck-Schmidt (And 2 brothers) took over from his father (Einar) and continued the business. This included refit and overhaul of existing vehicles as well as upgrade of tanks.

  • 50 new Infantry Fire Support Vehicles were delivered to The Danish Army – with the company as prime contractor handling also the tracked chassis, 25mm Turret, Weapons, Thermal, day etc.
  • 50 some M42 Tanks were upgraded with new powerpack, fire control optics etc.
  • 230 Leopard 1’s were upgraded to A5’s (Together with Rheinmetall and KMW.
  • E Falck-Schmidt on the man-lift side developed ultra compact manlifts and even build the tallest man-lift in the early 90s to a height of 50m to be delivered to the Petronas Towers in Malaysia – for indoor maintenance and cleaning.

In the 80’s several persons of the next generation entered the company in various positions with Michael Falck Schmidt running the civil side and Jan Falck-Schmidt running the Defence business from late 90’s when Jørgen and brothers retired.

FALCK-SCHMIDT also manufactured PIRANHA’s working with MOWAG, as well as development and supply of add-on armor solutions for vehicles and Mast systems.

The Company in early 90’s developed the system solution of elevating weapons, sights etc. on armored vehicles to increase kill capability while being protected, combining the experience and know how from all the vehicle programs and the design and build of man-lifts.

In the early 90’s the technology of ODIN (ETS/ATGM) system was created and first system was built working with GM Defense, RAYTHEON, ENOSA and more.

In the early 90’s the technology was used to complete the development and manufacture/delivery of ODIN (ETS-1/ATGM) to US army (STRYKER ATGM – Mxxxx). A 3 digit number of systems have been supplied and continuously supported to the US Forces, combat prove during IRAQ, KUWAIT, Afghanistan wars. This work ultimately supporting GDLS.

Following the ETS-1, the ETS-2 was developed and a 3 digit number of systems were delivered to GDLS priming delivery of these systems to KSA with the US Government.

Jan Falck-Schmidt in 2005 took the defence side of the old company and created Falck-Schmidt Defence Systems to separate the defence and the civilian side of the company. The company now focused on producing and maintaining mast for the defence market. This was ODIN and an early version of THOR.

In 2010 FS-ACE (Falck-Schmidt Advanced Composite Engineering) was established as part of the group to produce the carbon composite tubes that comprise the main components of the different mast systems.

This also gave way for a new venture in doing projects for Space. FSDS and FS-ACE delivered components for JUICE, EROS, AMOS, BEPI Colombo, Cluster, Rosetta, ExoMars, Solar Orbiter, James Webb Telescope, Israeli satellites and more.

Around 2016 the company went through a restructuring and FSDS and FS-ACE became a group under Falck-Schmidt Holding which includes Falck-Schmidt Aps/corp. – Falck-Schmidt Arabia (located in Saudi Arabia), Falck-Schmidt Españia (in Spain), with an office in Arlington, the United States of America.