Walter Creuz, the 80-year-old man who was found dead in a Morgan’s Harbour canal last week, was a pioneer in the world’s manufacturing industry.
Some in his native Germany might even call him famous.
The Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is still trying to determine exactly how the elderly man ended up in the water south of Uncle Bob Road in West Bay on 6 March. A post mortem found Mr. Creuz’s death was consistent with drowning, and at this point investigators do not suspect foul play.
About 48 years before his unfortunate demise, Mr. Creuz was on to something big. He was about to found the Sortimat company, which today is one of the world’s leading providers of assembly technologies for manufacturing….from his garage in Germany.
The Sortimat company’s website says Mr. Creuz produced his first bowl feeders, a sorting device used in mass manufacturing, in that garage in 1959.
By the end of the next decade, Mr. Creuz and his business partner Heinz Sommerfeld had hired 60 employees and the company had produced the world’s first assembly machines for disposable syringes.
The company now has 370 employees in Germany, India, and the US and does business in 40 countries.
‘We are very shocked here, we didn’t know,’ said Silke Fischer, head of marketing for Sortimat in Winnenden, Germany. ‘We mourn his death very much.’
Ms Fischer said Mr. Creuz sold his interest in Sortimat in 1988 and that the company was aware he had been living in the Caribbean.
She said the Sortimat Company he founded is considered to be the world’s leader in assembly systems for health-care products.
Today, the business mainly produces assembly machines for a wide range of tasks, and feeder technology used for the processing of complex parts for cars, electrical goods, furniture, toys, valves, fittings, bikes, or watches.
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