About Us
Our History
Stork Technical Services enjoys a rich entrepreneurial history tracing back to the early 1800s, when a schoolboy named Charles Theodorus Stork visited a steam-powered textile mill in Enschede. When he left school, he bought three looms with money he had borrowed from his father, to start the C.T. Stork & Co. woven goods factory. At 13, he was the youngest entrepreneur in the Netherlands, which still earns him a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
After years of success, Mr. Stork realized that no one was specializing in textile machine-building industry and he joined other textile manufacturers to campaign for railway lines allowing ease of access for product delivery from his manufacturing site to geographically remote customer locations. He then opened the Machinefabriek Gebr. Stork & Co. in Hengelo on September 4, 1868. Stork became listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange in 1990.
In 1999 Stork acquired Cooperheat, a leading provider in heat treatment equipment and services. In 2007, Stork sold their food systems business and acquired 70% of the shares in MASA in Latin America and Turbo Services, an independent service provider for power plant rotating equipment, strengthening its capabilities and global footprint.
In 2008, Stork was delisted from the stock exchange and remained with the two main pillars, Fokker and Stork Technical Services (STS). In 2009, a new management team was established for STS in order to combine the large number of independent companies, into ONE Stork, offering asset integrity management services to global customers globally. In 2011, the remaining 30% shares of MASA were acquired, and STS announced the acquisition of RBG, the leading provider of fabric maintenance and access solutions to the oil & gas industry. With this last acquisition, STS now employs 15000 employees worldwide and has footprints in the UK, Mainland Europe, Americas, Middle East and Asia Pacific.
