S550C concrete mixer

This concrete mixer is the symbol of a French company that in only thirty years became one of Europe’s leading construction equipment makers. Paulin Richier founded the company in a 30-square-meter workshop in the late 1920s. For this concrete mixer alone he registered some fifteen patents between 1929 and 1939. They were for improvements in dosing liquids, optimising mixing, and the automation of loading and unloading. In the late 1950s, the company organised exhibitions, producing catalogues and scale models celebrating this prosperous period during which its three French production sites exported a complete range of construction machines all over the world. Its purchase by Ford in 1972 marked the beginning of its decline, and it went into voluntary liquidation in 1982.