Alex van Gülpen, Johann Heinrich Lensing, and Theodor von Gimborn founded an iron foundry and machine works in Emmerich in 1868. By 1870 it was building the Emmerich Spherical Roaster, an early industrial coffee roaster. Emmerich was destroyed in the war, and the foundry poured its first new cast in 1949. The company took the name Probat in 1959.
