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History

The scaffolding manufacturers and who owns them

Most system scaffolding in Europe and North America comes from about a dozen companies, and several of the best-known names now sit inside larger groups. This is who they are, checked against each company’s own pages and reports.

By Ole Emil Frikstad Urstad · How the numbers are computed ·

Layher Allround scaffolding around a house of 11.4 × 5.3 m with a gabled roof (eaves 4.5 m, ridge 6 m), drawn by the ScaFix 3D model
Layher Allround around the example house, as ScaFix draws it in 3D.

Who are the biggest scaffolding manufacturers?

By size, the leading groups are Altrad (France), BrandSafway (US) and the German family firms PERI and Layher. Altrad reported about 65,000 people for 2025, BrandSafway about 35,000 and PERI about 10,000, but those totals include services. Layher has 2,700 staff. HAKI, Scafom-rux, Doka and ULMA follow.

Which companies make scaffolding today?

The table lists the makers whose systems you meet most often on European and North American sites. Founding years and owners are taken from the companies’ own history pages, approvals and financial reports, all read in October 2026. Where a company does not publish something, the cell says so rather than guessing.

MakerFoundedHead officeMain scaffold systemsOwnership (Oct 2026)
Layher1945Gueglingen-Eibensbach, GermanySpeedyScaf (Blitz), AllroundFamily company
PERI1969 (scaffolding from 1995–98)Weissenhorn, GermanyPERI UP Flex, PERI UP EasyFamily-owned
Altrad1985Montpellier, Franceplettac SL, Rotax Plus, Mostostal PlusLed by founder Mohed Altrad
BrandSafway2017 merger (SGB roots 1905)Atlanta, USASGB Cuplok, Hünnebeck Bosta and Modex, SafLockClayton, Dubilier & Rice and Brookfield
HAKINot published (HAKI says 70+ years in scaffolding)Sibbhult, SwedenHAKI Universal, HAKI frameHAKI Safety AB, listed in Stockholm
Scafom-rux1978Budel, NetherlandsRingscaff, SuperScafom Holding B.V.
Doka (AT-PAC)Not stated in the sources usedAmstetten, AustriaRinglockUmdasch Group; AT-PAC: 100 % Doka since Feb 2023
ULMA1957 workshop, 1961 cooperativeOñati, SpainBRIOCooperative, ULMA Group

How each type of system came about, from tube and coupler to frames and modular nodes, is told in our history of scaffolding. This page is about the companies.

How has Layher stayed a single-site family maker?

Layher is unusual among the large makers in keeping almost everything in one place. Its company page says design, production, sales, delivery and management are concentrated at Gueglingen-Eibensbach in Baden-Württemberg, and puts the workforce at 2,700 (Layher: the company). Its milestones page calls Layher a family company and records the start of internationalisation in 1970 with subsidiaries in the Netherlands, France and Switzerland. Layher now has subsidiaries in 45 countries and 31 service centres in Germany alone (Layher milestones).

Most of Layher’s recent engineering has gone into weight. The fourth generation of Allround, branded Lightweight, arrived in 2013. In 2019 a new steel deck used higher-tensile steel and thinner material to cut up to 2.2 kg, or 10 %, from a deck that was already on the market. In 2022 came the TwixBeam, an aluminium beam of two bolted U-sections, 200 mm deep, in lengths from 0.80 m to 6.60 m. Layher also sells its own planning software, the LayPLAN suite.

Close-up of the corner where the long wall and the gable wall meet, with PERI UP standards, decks, guardrails and toe boards in the ScaFix 3D model
The corner: the bays of the two walls meet, with deck, guardrail and toe board on each lift.

How did a formwork company become a scaffold maker?

PERI started in 1969 in Weissenhorn, founded by Artur and Christl Schwörer to make concrete construction easier. Scaffolding came a quarter of a century later. PERI’s own timeline dates the PERI UP system to 1995–98, the modular PERI UP Flex for industrial work to 2008–09, and the PERI UP Easy frame scaffold to 2016–19, together with a new production site in Günzburg. A galvanising plant in Günzburg followed in 2020. The founder handed management to his sons Alexander and Christian in 2007, and in 2014 PERI set up its own software company, CENTRIO.

Today PERI describes itself as family-owned, with about 10,000 employees and more than 140 warehouse locations in over 60 countries, still headquartered in Weissenhorn (PERI company page).

Who owns plettac, Mostostal and the other Altrad brands?

Altrad began in 1985 in Montpellier when Mohed Altrad took over Mefran, a scaffold manufacturer, and the group is still led by its founder (Altrad history). It has since grown mainly through acquisitions: in 2021 alone it completed eleven, including RMD Kwikform.

Today the scaffold factories are the smaller part of Altrad. In its results for the year to August 2025, equipment (the manufacture and distribution of scaffolding and other equipment) made up 14.5 % of revenue, and industrial services 85.5 %. The group reported about 65,000 people, offices in 51 countries, and 41 % of revenue from the United Kingdom (Altrad FY2025 results presentation, 16 January 2026).

Three Altrad scaffold businesses you will meet by name:

  • ALTRAD plettac assco makes facade, modular and mobile tower systems in steel and aluminium at Großräschen in Brandenburg, with about 300 employees (plettac assco: production).
  • ALTRAD-Mostostal has been in the Polish scaffold market since 1993 and sells the Mostostal Plus frame system and the ROTAX Plus modular system (Altrad-Mostostal).
  • Altrad Generation in Ireland supplies scaffolding, fencing and groundworks from a network of 31 branches (Altrad Generation).

Note that Hünnebeck is not an Altrad brand. It belongs to BrandSafway (see below).

How did SGB, Safway and Hünnebeck end up in one company?

BrandSafway is the result of a chain of takeovers that its own timeline lays out year by year (BrandSafway history):

  1. 1905: Daniel Palmer-Jones founds the Tubular Scaffolding Company, renamed Scaffolding Great Britain (SGB) in 1919.
  2. 1929: Dr Emil Mauritz Hünnebeck founds Rautennetz GmbH in Germany; it is renamed Hünnebeck GmbH in 1961.
  3. 1936: Safway is founded in the United States; Brand Energy & Infrastructure Services follows in 1961.
  4. 1986: Mowlem buys SGB, the British pioneer of tube and fittings and of Cuplok. In 2000 Harsco buys SGB, and in 2005 Hünnebeck joins the Harsco group.
  5. 2013: Harsco sells its infrastructure business to the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R), which combines it with Brand. In 2014 the SGB and Hünnebeck names are brought back.
  6. 2017: Brand merges with Safway to form BrandSafway. In 2025 the UK business Lyndon SGB starts trading as Brand Access Solutions.

In September 2019 Brookfield Business Partners agreed to buy half of CD&R’s stake, leaving each with roughly 45 % and management with a minority (CD&R press release). BrandSafway’s home page puts the business at about 35,000 employees, 350 locations in 30 countries and more than 32,000 customers, with its head office in Atlanta (BrandSafway). It describes what it offers as access, industrial services, and forming and shoring solutions.

Which mid-sized makers should you know?

  • HAKI started in Sibbhult in Skåne and still produces there; it says it has been in scaffolding for more than 70 years and is represented in more than 25 countries (HAKI). Its parent, HAKI Safety AB (formerly Midway Holding), has been listed on Nasdaq Stockholm since 1989. In 2024 its net sales fell 12 %, or 5 % organically (HAKI Safety year-end report 2024).
  • Scafom-rux was founded in 1978 by Frans Brinkmann in the Netherlands. The German maker RUX joined in 2005, which gave the group its name. Factories followed in Kaulille in Belgium (2000), Kunming (2005) and Yantai (2008) in China, and the group took over plants in Romania (2005) and Poland (2009); the group entered the UK and Irish markets in 2024 (Scafom-rux history).
  • Doka, the Austrian formwork maker in the Umdasch Group, partnered with the US scaffold manufacturer AT-PAC in 2020 and completed a 100 % takeover in February 2023, so it can sell formwork and scaffolding from one source (Doka).
  • ULMA began in 1957 as a six-man workshop in Oñati and became a cooperative on 8 September 1961. One of its first products came from brochures a founder’s brother brought back from the United States: metal modular scaffolding (ULMA: 60 years).

Which brands do US contractors use?

Two names come up again and again in American searches, and only one of them is a brand.

  • Waco. The red Waco frame scaffold is now a BrandSafway product line. BrandSafway’s WACO page says the equipment is available exclusively through BrandSafway and that WACO RED scaffolding and shoring is still manufactured to the original equipment specifications. The range covers box frames, 3-foot-wide, narrow, access and walk-through frames, WACO Hi-load shoring and aluminum stair units.
  • Baker. A baker scaffold is a type rather than a brand: a narrow rolling platform about 6 feet long and 29 to 30 inches deep, used mostly indoors. Several makers build it. MetalTech’s Jobsite Series 6′ Baker is rated at 1,100 lb for user and materials combined, stacks up to three units high, and is sold as compatible with the Bil-Jax, Buffalo, Werner, UST and Buildman 6-foot drywall bakers. Bil-Jax, which dates itself to 1947 (Bil-Jax: our story), sells its own version as the Pro-Jax, 29 inches wide, in packages from 4 to 17 feet high (Bil-Jax: Pro-Jax).

Because baker frames from different makers look alike, the same rule applies as in Europe: use the maker’s own guardrails, outriggers and instructions for the frame you have.

Which smaller national makers matter?

Outside the big groups, national makers still hold strong positions at home:

  • Alutec (Jamax), Norway. Founded in 1986 by the brothers Knut-Jarle and Espen Aspenes, who still own it 50/50. It has 30 employees at Os near Bergen and in Kristiansand (Alutec history).
  • Aluhak, Norway. An aluminium scaffold and hoist supplier that began in 1986 on Karmøy and now has its head office in Stavanger (Aluhak).
  • Krause, Germany. Founded in 1900 and based in Alsfeld, best known for ladders and mobile towers (Krause).
  • MJ-Gerüst, Germany. A family-owned maker in Plettenberg that has built scaffolds since the early 1970s (MJ-Gerüst).
  • ALFIX, Germany. Based in Großschirma, Saxony; its ALFIX 70 frame scaffold was first approved by the German building authority on 27 May 1999 (DIBt approval Z-8.1-862.pdf)).

Where does low-cost ringlock come from?

We found no official trade statistic that separates scaffolding from other steel products, so this section gives no volumes, only what the companies themselves document. Scafom-rux opened its own Chinese factories in 2005 and 2008. Chinese producers such as ADTO, Cangzhou Weisitai and Changli XMWY are named, next to Layher, PERI and BrandSafway, in the sample company list of a Market Glass report listing from February 2025; that is a report seller’s list, not a ranking. The Norwegian maker Alutec says its competitors are imported from Europe, China and the Philippines.

Why does the maker matter on site?

The maker decides more than the colour of the paint. A German system approval from the DIBt names its holder, so the assembly instructions, load tables and spare parts all come from that company. Mixing brands, even when the nodes look alike, takes you outside those documents. When a brand changes owner, check that parts and instructions are still supported. The 2014 return of the SGB and Hünnebeck names shows that brands can outlive several owners. The ScaFix system pages sort the systems by maker, so you can see which parts a given brand uses before you plan.

Frequently asked questions

Is Hünnebeck part of Altrad?

No. Hünnebeck joined the Harsco group in 2005, became part of Brand in 2013 and has been part of BrandSafway since the 2017 merger. Altrad’s German scaffold brand is ALTRAD plettac assco.

Who owns Layher?

Layher calls itself a family company. It was founded by Wilhelm Layher in 1945 and still runs design, production and management from Gueglingen-Eibensbach.

Is HAKI a listed company?

HAKI belongs to HAKI Safety AB, which was called Midway Holding until its name change and has been listed on Nasdaq Stockholm since 1989.

Who makes Ringlock scaffolding?

Ringlock-type systems come from many factories. Doka sells a Ringlock range and has owned the US manufacturer AT-PAC outright since February 2023.

Who makes Waco scaffolding?

Waco frame scaffolding and shoring is sold exclusively through BrandSafway, which says the WACO RED line is still made to the original equipment specifications.

Which scaffolding company is the oldest?

Among scaffold specialists, BrandSafway traces its roots to 1905, when the company that became SGB was founded in Britain. Krause dates itself to 1900, but as a ladder maker.

Sources

Primary sources used for this article, with the date each was read.