Manfred Esters is a veteran of Emmerich. He has now lived in the town on the Lower Rhine for 64 years - 40 of them together with his wife Margit, who runs her own hairdressing salon. He used to spend an hour or two here after work in the production department at PROBAT.

Today – after 50 years of working at PROBAT! – he is a pensioner and still enjoys entertaining Margit‘s customers with his witty and relaxed, but also direct manner. Manfred was also greatly appreciated by his colleagues throughout his working life at PROBAT. With Manfred, you always knew where you stood!

He came to PROBAT by pure chance. Because the company was known for the quality of its training even back then, the then 14-year-old applied for an apprenticeship as a machine fitter in 1973, thus sealing his career with the world market leader. After a rigorous but, as Manfred says, also very instructive training period, he initially carried out temporary office work in the PROBAT administration department. He then switched to production, first in grinder and screen construction and later in drum construction, to which he remained loyal for all but a few years before his well-deserved retirement in August 2023. For health reasons, he spent a last short period of his career in specialty roaster construction, where he naturally always kept an eye on the drum makers.

I built the hearts of the roasting machines!

JUPITER, NEPTUNE, SATURN, RC: He is particularly proud of his work in drum construction, as he says he built the hearts of the roasting machines. He always took great pleasure in the “wedding“, i.e. assembling the drums of the continuous PROBAT RC roasters, which are made from several parts and are up to 5 m long and 2 m wide. When everything could be assembled precisely and seamlessly, Manfred was overjoyed. In this context, he also has fond memories of the particularly strong camaraderie (even more so then than now). His long-time colleague and friend Heinz Warthuysen, who still works at PROBAT today and whom Manfred almost affectionately calls “my Hein and everything“, was his most loyal companion and a person he could always rely on in any situation, and that literally: Heinz sometimes took over the welding work inside the RC roasting drums, which can take a long time, in place of Manfred, who was plagued by hip problems, in order to relieve his colleague. Manfred will always be grateful to him for this extraordinary collegiality!

The master of the shovel plans

“Welding equipment, an angle grinder, a brush and – most importantly – a hammer!“ is Manfred‘s answer to the question about his daily working tools. To ensure that the roasting drums of the NEPTUNE roasters are as round as they need to be in the end, they are rolled, straightened and hammered, which makes a lot of noise, much to the displeasure of his colleagues working in the immediate vicinity, he tells us with a grin. The arrangement and alignment of the shovels inside the drum, which are responsible for moving the coffee beans during the roasting process, is a closely guarded PROBAT secret. It was not without reason that PROBAT CEO Wim Abbing called Manfred the “master of the shovel plans“ during the official ceremony to mark his 50th anniversary, as Manfred always kept a close eye on the drawings containing this knowledge.

Even as a pensioner, Manfred never gets bored: he supports his wife, who is still working, with increasing enthusiasm with the daily bookkeeping, spends a lot of time with his grandchildren and also goes on extended convertible tours. But there is one thing that Manfred never misses out on: His “famous daily round“, a bicycle tour along the Rhine promenade in Emmerich.

Thank you, Manfred, for five decades of loyalty to the company.