WatchTime - August 2012

SUPPLY SIDE
Hairsprings
THE QUESTION OF HOW TO
OBTAIN HAIRSPRINGS IS
VEXING MUCH OF THE SWISS
WATCH INDUSTRY.
ASTRAL TECHNOLOGIE SA, in Porrentruy, Switzerland, part of
the Festina Group, also makes hairsprings. Customers can’t buy
them separately, but must purchase complete assortments. Soprod,
which is also part of the Festina Group, uses fairly large numbers of
Astral’s springs in its automatic caliber A10. The Festina Group is
now determining whether it can develop the capacity to make
50,000 hairsprings at another subsidiary, MHVJ (Manufacture Horlogère
Vallée de Joux) in Le Sentier, and even greater numbers at Soprod
(in Les Reusilles).
The Swiss company Atokalpa makes escapements that are
used in movements made by Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier and
other companies. Vaucher and Atokalpa are both owned by the
Sandoz Family Foundation (as is the Parmigiani watch brand).
Atokalpa has long specialized in making gear trains, pinions
and micro-gears for mechanical watches. It began making assortments
in 2005.
Where some hairspring makers source their material is a
closely guarded secret, but it’s widely known that wholesalers
offer the necessary wire in smaller quantities.
As far as prices are concerned, no one can compete with Nivarox-FAR.
Customers report that hairsprings from Precision
Engineering and Atokalpa are sometimes 10 times more expensive
than comparable products from Nivarox-FAR. That’s significantly
more than the price of a complete ETA 2892 automatic
movement or a SW 300, a so-called “clone” of the ETA
2892 made by the movement manufacturer Sellita. Haas hairsprings
are also relatively expensive. Lower-priced merchandise
can be purchased from Japanese producers: Seiko, for example,
produces hairsprings, but most makers of Swiss movements
have remained reluctant to use Japanese hairsprings. (TAG
Heuer, however, announced in March that it would be buying
Seiko assortments for use in its in-house movements because Nivarox
had not renewed its contract with the company.)
124 WatchTime August 2012
Each hairspring is attached at two
points: its inner end is affixed to the
balance’s staff, its outer end to the stud.
The dilemma about how to obtain hairsprings is vexing much
of the Swiss watch industry. Sellita, for instance, which depends on
Nivarox escapements, filed an appeal of Comco’s decision to allow
this year’s delivery cutbacks. (In May the decision was extended to
include 2013 as well.) The company made about 500,000 movements
in 2010, some 800,000 movements in 2011, and plans to
produce about 1 million this year. “We’re only receiving 85 percent
as many Nivarox components as we received in 2010,” says Sellita’s
owner, Miguel Garcia. He knows that the future of his business
is at stake. “In the meantime, we’ve already taken so much money
in hand that we can also plan the industrialized production of escapement
assortments. But it will take a certain amount of time before
that gets up and running.”
At the moment, neither he nor anyone else will talk publicly
about the possibility of cooperation between Sellita and Precision
Engineering or Carl Haas. Whatever secret plans may be up
Sellita’s sleeve, one thing is certain: when you drive from La
Chaux-de-Fonds to Le Locle, you’ll see that Sellita is significantly
enlarging its gray building in Le Crêt-du-Locle.
A few brands can make hairsprings to meet their own needs.
One is Montblanc’s subsidiary Minerva, in Villeret, Switzerland.
Another is A. Lange & Söhne, in Glashütte, Germany,
which has developed impressive hairspring expertise during the
last several years. Lange’s former chief, the savvy German businessman
Günter Blümlein, who died in 2001, acquired the necessary
machinery (which was thought to be superfluous at the
time) and a portion of the still-available Nivarox material from
hairspring specialist Carl Haas. A. Lange’s hairsprings are used
not just in its own watches but also by Jaeger-LeCoultre. (Both
companies are owned by the Richemont Group.) Jaeger itself
has made great strides in hairspring manufacturing: if necessary,
it could start to operate independently in a relatively short time.
Geneva-based Rolex, which manufactures hundreds of thousands
of COSC-certified chronometers, makes more hairsprings
by far than any other watch brand. They’re made of what Rolex
calls “Parachrom,” an alloy of niobium and zircon. This alloy resists
magnetic fields, and hairsprings made from it are 10 times
less susceptible to shocks than conventional hairsprings. But
Rolex sells only complete watches; it doesn’t sell its hairsprings.
Who will fill the hairspring void no one knows. If, as many observers
expect, Comco rules in favor of the Swatch Group, watch
companies will have to find their hairsprings elsewhere, or invest
huge amounts of money in equipment to make their own.