The Lord of Pure Things

Clear & Clean Legroom

Labor Room V

Cutting the books

Cleanroom

Interfalz - Book Manufacturing

Masterbox

HiTech - ultra-pure cloth HDMMH

Win Labuda

Factory premises

Win Labuda is known in the cleanroom industry like no other, if one may say so. The founder of Clear & Clean GmbH based in Lübeck celebrated his 80th birthday in June 2018 with numerous illustrious guests and received countless congratulations on the 40th anniversary of his company in June 2019. His life's work as an entrepreneur as well as a researcher is impressive.

He started early; the trained mechanic for measurement and control technology and technical merchant Win Labuda: At just 26 years old, he founded his first company in 1964, an import business for electronic components. A few years later, he met Edward Paley, the founder of American Texwipe Inc., and quickly grasped the immense importance of purity as a central good for future industries. From then on, Win Labuda dedicated himself with intensity and enthusiasm to the physics of wiping cleaning procedures.

At that time, this was largely unexplored; "cleaning cloths" had a poor reputation in high-tech industries. In 1979, Labuda founded the company Clear & Clean GmbH to produce its own cleanroom consumables with the highest technical standards. Complementing this entrepreneurial activity, he undertook meticulous research into the wiping cleaning process, considering the highest purity requirements. The first years were not easy for the young company, especially since sales had to finance the research, and the industry was still in its infancy.

A major order from Siemens Regensburg in 1986 ultimately rewarded the perseverance of the entrepreneur and visionary Labuda and secured the future of his company for many years. Other orders from renowned clients such as Airbus, Bosch, IBM, Infineon, Leitz, Osram, Rolex, Semikron, Texas Instruments, and Zeiss followed, elevating Clear & Clean and thus Win Labuda to the Olymp of technologists dedicated to the topic of surface cleanliness. His products now practically sell themselves, and they still do today. Acquisition was and is a foreign word at Clear & Clean.

So to speak "on the side," but with dedicated work, Labuda has been involved since 1986 and again from 2012 in the "VDI Guideline Committee 2083 - Cleanroom Technology" and has gladly made the results of his intensive wiping agent research accessible to the public.

With the acquisition of the 1.2-hectare company premises in Lübeck, which also provided ample space for laboratory rooms, Win Labuda was able to further strengthen the top position of Clear & Clean as a provider of special products in the field of cleanroom consumables. Both Win Labuda himself and his company Clear & Clean are arguably unmatched in expertise and specialization in this segment.

After Clear & Clean products became self-sustaining following the mega-deal with Siemens, the company founder and industry-recognized expert Win Labuda was able to devote himself with meticulousness and passion to researching surface cleanliness and publishing his findings. Over the past four decades, he has not only registered ten patents in his name but also published countless technical articles.

The operational management of the well-known competent Clear & Clean team has been in the hands of Mrs. Yuko Labuda since 2003. While she manages the business wisely, kindly, and with great expertise, Labuda, now 81 years old, still spends his days in his specialized laboratory, surrounded by microscopes and specialized equipment, detecting contaminants at the molecular level and developing solutions for their removal. The measuring and testing devices developed by him and the Swabian mechanical engineer Klaus Schöttle are unmatched in the industry. As a person, expert, and entrepreneur, Win Labuda is undoubtedly a unique figure.