Disperators History
Our story started 1956
Our eventful story began as early as 1956 when Gösta Hägglund (Hägglund & Söner AB) bought the rights for the manufacturing of disposers from a U.S. company. With a genuine Hägglund motor, this Swedish-made quality disposer was sold to Swedish households until 1964 when the City of Stockholm charged a fee and introduced permit requirements for waste disposers. This was a major set-back for the disposer division in the company, and Hägglunds Allehanda wrote: “Preconceived and poorly supported views are a common human occurrence. It is unfortunate that it is also striking the food waste disposers.” (Ref. En produkthistoria! by Helen Anderson).
In 1967, the disposer division was sold to two employees at Hägglunds & Söner, who were forced to seek other business opportunities to save the business. They developed professional kitchen disposers and those especially for maritime applications, and Disperator AB thereby saw the light of day for the first time. In the 1980s, Disperator participated as a pioneer in the first research study in Sweden (financed by public funding) on the significance of the disposer as a source-sorting aid for food waste.
Development of new products and new markets
The manufacture and sale of food waste disposers again became Disperator’s core business when the current owner, the Holmqvist family, acquired the company in 1989. And an exciting journey was begun based on both the development of new products and new markets – within Sweden, but to an even greater extent internationally.
In recent years, several research reports have been published that show that the disposer does not have the negative impact on the functioning of the municipal sewage system as feared, and focus has instead been directed at broader positive possibilities that the disposer provides for collecting food waste for the production of biogas through digestion. This led Stockholm Vatten, the municipal sewage utility, to remove the fee on disposers and the application requirement for disposers for private households in the Stockholm and Huddinge municipality in 2008. Many other municipalities have since followed the developments in Stockholm with interest. The wind has also turned in the market for professional kitchens and in some municipalities, food waste disposers have been cautiously accepted as a source-sorting aid.
We are looking forward to an exciting future!…….
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