Spotlight on our anniversary celebrants – 5 personal questions for Thierry Walther
Our dedicated staff are the key to our success. As part of our ‘5
personal questions for…’ series, we’d like to introduce you to our
colleagues, in no particular order.
Today: Thierry Walther, Extrusion Press operator
His motto: Stay calm – don’t let yourself get stressed and don’t cause stress if things aren’t going as they should.
Thierry, how long have you been working at Aluminium Laufen and what are your responsibilities?I’ve been with the company for over 25 years now and work on various extrusion presses. I learnt the trade from the ground up on Press 27, an extrusion press with 2,700 tonnes of pressing force. Since 11 April 2014, I’ve been working on Press 35, an extrusion press with 3,500 tonnes of pressing force. I still remember that date clearly, because the P35 had just been installed and I extruded the very first aluminium profile on that press.
How did you come to join our company?My path here was rather spontaneous. In the 1990s, I ran a restaurant that I had taken over from my parents. At the end of 1999, I decided to give up the restaurant. I then came to Aluminium Laufen through a temp agency. But I was already familiar with the company. My father had worked on the
gravity diecasting line in the foundry from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s – for around 30 years – at the site in Laufen at the time. Some of the staff still knew my father personally when I started at Alu Laufen.
What does the company’s 25th anniversary, which you celebrated last year, mean to you personally?The anniversary makes me proud. I will soon be one of the company’s longest-serving employees, and it means a great deal to me to have been part of the company for so long.
How have your work and the technology changed in recent years?A lot has changed over the last few decades. In the past, the work was very mechanical; today it has become much more modern and technical. Digitalisation and networked systems play a major role; much of the work is now controlled electronically. The demands on precision have also increased: whereas tolerances in the tenths of a millimetre range used to be standard, we now work in the hundredths of a millimetre range. That doesn’t make the work any better or worse – it’s simply different.
How do you spend your free time?In my spare time, I like to spend time with my family, go out for a meal with my girlfriend or visit my daughters – one lives in Paris, the other in Québec. To balance out my work, I really enjoy driving a tractor and pursuing my passion for farming, which I now do as a hobby. I used to be a member of the local council as well. As I work shifts – I have three- and sometimes four-shift rotas – it was often difficult to organise meetings, which is why I eventually stepped down from the local council.
Thierry Walther celebrated his 25th anniversary with the company in 2025. As a extrusion press operator, he loads the dies for the relevant profiles into the extrusion presses, operates and monitors the machinery, and ensures that the specified process parameters are adhered to. He works with great dedication to fulfil the diverse requirements of customers and products.
Before the extrusion process, the round aluminium billets are heated to a temperature of approx. 480 °C. They are then pressed through the die – the so-called mould – at a pressure of up to 4,000 tonnes, giving the aluminium profile its desired shape. Thierry Walther and his colleagues manufacture aluminium profiles, tubes and rods weighing between 250 grams and 18 kilograms per metre and measuring between 5 millimetres to 13 metres length. 
+41 61 775 22 22
info@aluminium-laufen.com