Handing over the baton
SGB MANAGEMENT TEAM WITH NEW DUEAL LEADERSHIP
Jost Berg retires from active management after 36 years. His successors are Carsten Schmidt and SGB’s long-standing Technical Director Martin Hücking.
Siegen. On 1 April 2025, Carsten Schmidt and Martin Hücking took over responsibility for SGB GmbH as the new Managing Directors – Jost Berg is taking his well-deserved retirement after 36 years, 35 of which as Managing Director.
Jost Berg, who is celebrating his 65th birthday this year, is the son of company founder Dr. Fritz Berg, who founded SGB in Siegen in 1962. This business operated as Sicherungsgerätebau GmbH up until 2010, and Dr. Fritz Berg revolutionized environmental and water protection in the storage of water-polluting liquids with his patented vacuum solutions for leak monitoring in underground tanks. After joining the company in 1989, Jost Berg took over as Managing Director in 1990. Since then, many other innovative leak monitoring solutions have been added - not only for tanks, but also for pipelines. Today, around 480,000 SGB leak detectors and countless leak detection probes are monitoring double-walled tanks and double-walled pipes, single-walled tanks with leak protection lining and dome, and inspection chambers of all kinds all over the world: at filling stations, in refineries, in the chemical industry, in the food industry, on heating oil tank installations in domestic boiler rooms, in data centers, in ex-areas and in ex-systems, on emergency power supply systems, in high-vacuum systems, on hydrogen and LNG applications and much more.
“In every ending lies a new beginning - like Unamuno, I see the passing of the baton with both happiness and sadness,” says Jost Berg. “True to our motto ‘For a clean and unpolluted environment’, the company’s aim from the outset has been to develop and produce safe and reliable environmental protection systems, while at the same time protecting the people directly and indirectly affected by these systems. I have put a lot of passion and commitment in, experienced the ups and downs of the market, met innovative, technically skilled and highly interesting people, traveled the world and, yes, made the odd bad investment. But the bottom line is that I can draw an absolutely positive conclusion and am extremely grateful that I have been able to help write the company’s history up to this point together with an unbeatable team. Now I’m looking forward to the time ‘after SGB’ and will devote myself to my family, my hobbies and traveling.”
Jost Berg will be succeeded by Carsten Schmidt and Martin Hücking in dual leadership. Since 2022, SGB GmbH has been part of the globally operating ELAFLEX Group, one of the leading international specialists for refueling technology and safe connections for handling sensitive liquids and gases. “We are convinced”, says Stefan Kunter, speaker of the management board of ELAFLEX HIBY GmbH & Co. KG, “that the synthesis in the management of commercial, internationally oriented expertise on the one hand and many years of technical know-how combined with brilliant product knowledge on the other will continue the company’s success and combine continuity with new impulses.”
Carsten Schmidt, a business graduate (FH), is an expert in the field of international sales. He brings a wealth of knowledge to SGB, gained from over 25 years in the tank construction, rail and mining industries. The 52-year-old has experience in both product and project business at national and international level and was most recently deputy managing director of a global mining supplier. He has been part of the SGB team since the beginning of the year and has been a full-time Managing Director since the beginning of April, succeeding Jost Berg. “My aim is to strengthen and further develop SGB in its successful tradition as a leading manufacturer of leak detection technology with new impetus,” explains Schmidt.
Martin Hücking, born in 1965, has a degree in engineering and has worked for SGB since 1992. As Technical Director, he is responsible for a number of innovations and milestones, such as the first explosion-proof vacuum leak detector VL-H9 (1997), the first pressure leak detector with integrated manifold for multiple underground tanks ELC (1999), the first leak detectors for double-walled hose lines (1999), the first electronically operated leak detector (2002), the vacuum system for simultaneous monitoring of underground tanks and pipelines VIMS (2013), the first overpressure monitoring unit for simultaneous leak monitoring of tanks and pipelines LDU (2010), the first partially explosion-proof vacuum combination leak detector for underground tanks and pipelines VLXE-SAB T/P (2017), the first leak monitoring system for LNG pipelines LD VIP (2017) and the first electronic leak detector for ex-areas VLXE . . Ex (2020). “An open mind for innovation and inventiveness have always characterized the history of SGB. We have successfully mastered many challenges in the past. Always with an ear to the market and its needs. This is our strength, which we will continue to put into practice and build on,” adds Hücking.
“With Carsten Schmidt and Martin Hücking, we have gained two competent experts with experience in their specialist areas to manage SGB. We are looking forward to a good and successful cooperation and are confident about the future of our companies," concludes Stefan Kunter: “I am very pleased and grateful that Jost Berg will continue to support us as a Senior Consultant in an advisory capacity in the future.”
