His sons, Johann Jakob and Salomon produced cast iron and built fire extinguishers, pumps and apparatus for the textile industry; later, they also started installing heaters.

[citation needed] In 1839, a foundry was added, a mechanical workshop was set up, and the first steam engine was built and installed in Winterthur (1841).

In approximately 1860, Sulzer opened its first foreign sales office in Turin, and the company participated in the world exhibition in Paris in 1867.

In 1872, 24 workers' dwellings were built in Winterthur by the “Gesellschaft für Erstellung billiger Wohnhäuser” (Society for Affordable Housing Construction).

By approximately 1900, the company had over 3,000 employees and sales offices in Milan, Paris, Cairo, London, Moscow and Bucharest, as well as the Japanese city of Kobe from 1914.

[citation needed] As a family business, the company had grown over the years in the form of a general partnership, and in June 1914 it was converted into two stock corporations with registered offices in Winterthur and Ludwigshafen am Rhein, both of which were renamed Gebrüder Sulzer Aktiengesellschaft.

[citation needed] Out of political and personal considerations, Sulzer decided to sell its subsidiaries in Germany by the beginning of the war.

Sulzer refused to sign an agreement to limit the future sale of marine diesel engines to the Axis countries, and was blacklisted by the Allies as a result.

During the second heyday after the Second World War, the Sulzer Tower was built in the early 1960s - the company's new headquarters, a landmark of Winterthur and at 99.7 meters the tallest building in Switzerland at the time.

In 1961, Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works (SLM) in Winterthur was acquired, and the large diesel engine became Sulzer's flagship product worldwide.

In the middle of the year, the steam locomotive and machine factory DLM became independent, the remains of the former SLM became Winpro AG in 2001 through a management buyout.

In 2001, patients experienced problems with contaminated hip joint implants from Sulzer Medica in the USA, leading to class action lawsuits.

Sulzer Chemtech acquired US Cana-Tex in 2005, strengthening its field services for separation columns, Swiss companies Mixpac, Werfo and Mold in 2006 to expand static mixing activities, followed by the separation business of UK-based KnitMesh Ltd in 2007 and several tower field service companies in Australia, Thailand, India, Germany in 2009 and Canada in 2011.

In 2005, a Swiss-government sponsored historical study authored by historian Peter Hug revealed that Sulzer provided fissile material in the 1970s for the South African nuclear weapons program.

Meanwhile, the Swiss Federation of Commerce and Industry intervened in the debate and indirectly exerted pressure in favor of admitting the deal.

[9] In 2007, the Viennese investors Ronny Pecik and Georg Stumpf together with the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg acquired a majority stake in Sulzer.

This surprising entry drew the longest investigation by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), at the end of which a charge of breach of disclosure obligations resulted.

The same year, Sulzer’s Chemtech division bought Wärtsilä’s oil separation technology business (VIEC – Vessel Internal Electrostatic Coalescer), based in Norway.

[citation needed] In 2018, Sulzer acquired US company JWC Environmental, LLC, a provider of solids reduction and removal products such as grinders, screens and dissolved air flotation system for municipal, industrial and commercial wastewater applications.

In order to avoid Sulzer being indirectly exposed to US sanctions, the company submitted a request to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to take over five million shares from Renova, which was granted on 11 April.

"[13] With the acquisition of the US-headquartered GTC Technology in April 2019, Sulzer complemented its Chemtech offering with proprietary processes and systems for the production of aromatics and other petrochemicals.

[citation needed] Sulzer grew its aftermarket activities in July 2019 through the acquisition of Alba Power, a service provider for aeroderivative gas turbines.

[citation needed] In 2020, Sulzer acquired Swiss-German Haselmeier, providing the company access to the highly attractive drug-delivery devices market with self-injection pens for reproductive health, diabetes or osteoporosis patients.

[citation needed] Sulzer developed a series of rail traction engines in the 1930s and 1940s which were used extensively in diesel locomotives in the UK, Europe and South America.

Many were built under licence by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow as six-, eight- and twelve-cylinder form, and in Romania, by Reșița works for Electroputere Craiova.

This was merely reworking of an existing design into a new application[15] Ten 16 ASV25/30 3,600 hp (2,700 kW) power units were installed into locomotives belonging to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and the Union Pacific.