Who Owns Metabo?

Albrecht Schnizler built his first hand drill in his parents' bakery in Nürtingen in 1923 and sold 50,000 units of the No. 18 model. He founded Schnizler GmbH in 1924 with Julius Closs, a local brewery owner, and the company took its name in 1932 from its flagship product: the Metallbohrdreher, or metal drill, shortened to Metabo.

A fire destroyed most of the factory in late 1945, and reconstruction finished by 1948. Postwar growth led to a new plant in Nürtingen's Steinach industrial zone, completed in stages through 1969. The company built its reputation on angle grinders, drills and metalworking tools for professional users, and it remains strongly associated with that trade.

Family ownership ended in 2012 when French investor Chequers Capital took a majority stake through Power Tool Invest. Hitachi Koki, the power tool arm of Hitachi, agreed to buy Metabo in late 2015 and completed the takeover on March 1, 2016. When KKR acquired Hitachi Koki in 2017, Metabo came with it; the group renamed itself Koki Holdings in June 2018 and rebranded Hitachi Power Tools as HiKOKI that October.

Inside Koki Holdings, Metabo operates as a semi autonomous "company within the company," keeping its German engineering, Nürtingen production and distinct green branding. In North America, where the Hitachi tool line was renamed Metabo HPT in 2018, the two related badges coexist: Metabo for the German professional line, Metabo HPT for the Japanese engineered range, which began transitioning toward the HiKOKI name in the early 2020s.