Information about the LM club, nov 2024

 

The LM Club Denmark is:

– A club for all LM sailors (the entire LM family right from the smallest (LM 9) to the largest (LM38).

– A club set up to help and give each other tips and good advice

– A club providing information

– A club where you can get inspired by seing other LM boats

– A club providing travel adventures for your inspiration

– A club where we arrange business visits

– A club with local events around the country such as local meetings, social events, courses, presentations, etc.

– A club, where we seek technical knowledge and other information about our boats and their equipment and make it available to our present members as well as future LM owners.

– A club with service such as club merchandise, e.g. caps, towels, stands, mugs, etc. The value and content of the club very much depends on you as a member, so we encourage everybody to contribute with your experiences and come up with good ideas, new initiatives and suggestions to the board in general. 

 

The histore of the club: 

The history of the club goes back as fare as about 2008, when a group of LM owners thought it might be interesting with a club where they could meet, support and inspire each other – and bring together knowledge about the LM boats.

As a nationwide club, the foundation stone was laid with a founding general meeting on 31.03.2012.

The club was then named “LM-Klubben Danmark” and had its own website www.lmklubben.dk under construction.

After a very turbulent year 2015, the club was re-established.

The layout of our current website – and the club’s intention to establish both knowledge of our boats (for the benefit of all members) and activities during the year (such as the annual meeting and company visits) – has resulted in a steadily growing membership.

 

Membership: login and unsubscribe 

Join the LM Club, Denmark.

Sign up for this link: https://lmklubben.unioo.info/subscriptions

Contingent per calendar year: Personal membership DKK 150, – Family membership DKK 200, –

New members will receive a free stand at registration.

As a member you have access to our member pages with lots of data and good advice via log in code, as well as almost free access to “LM-Træf” and more.

Change of address, mail, etc., and unsubscribe: Use this online form: Change membership conditions, LM kasserer

Or send an email to    

History of LM in Lunderskov 

A furniture factory that grew and almost became afloat.

History: There is far from a small production of children’s furniture in wood through caravans to the world’s largest mill blades. But LM holds it all.

By Martin Wilde. Brought in “Jyske Vestkysten” on November 21, 2009.

Lunderskov: When Ejner Lorentzen founded Lunderskov Møbelfabrik in 1940, he had hardly thought that one day the company would develop into the world’s largest producer of wind turbine blades. Back then, wind turbines were mostly used to grind grain or, to a lesser extent and called wind engines, to draw water from wells or for other functions on the farms in the area. Ejner Lorentzen did not think about wind turbines either. He, on the other hand, made wooden children’s furniture, and it was a success. The small workshop grew and soon it became necessary to build a real factory. It was build in Møllegade, where a long, two-storey yellow brick building first appeared in the 1950s. The Lorentzen family lived upstairs in the first floor.   

The fibreglass is coming 

At that time, Ejner Lorentzen had hired a skilled carpenter who worked as a joiner. His name was Aage Skouboe, and it turned out that his skills exceeded work with wood. In 1952, Lorentzen and Skouboe began to explore the possibilities of a brand new material that had just arrived in Denmark: fibreglass. Initially, tubs were produced, but up through the 1950s and 1960s the many possibilities of the new material were tested. The two letters LM soon were on both caravans, fishing cars, speedboats and cottages.

However, the caravans came to a quick end, when Lorentzen and Skouboe in 1960 found that it was easier to import them from England. It also took time to control all the processes of making fibreglass work, and for some years the import of English caravans helped pay the loss of the fibreglass production. At the same time, the production of wooden furniture stopped and the company’s carpenters instead made accommodation for leisure boats.

In 1964, LM Glasfiber was able to start a new factory on Rolles Møllevej. The original furniture factory had undergone several expansions, also on Drosselvej when it was built, but Ejner Lorentzen and Aage Skouboe now decided to share the company. Ejner Lorentzen continued for a few years with the camping part, until he sold LM Camping to some Englishmen. The company still exists on industrivej in Lunderskov, but now named InterCamp.

LM Glasfiber, on the other hand, started producing small speedboats. Up until the mid-1990s, a large part of LM Glasfiber’s production represented boats. Initially, boat hulls were also produced for others, but experiments were also made to make a houseboat that was launched in Mølledammen, along with many other things. Vessels for fishing cars transporting live fish to Germany is also an invention made at LM Glasfiber. Previously, fish were transported in large wooden vessels in railway wagons – wooden vessels which the original furniture factory also repaired – but around 1970 the fish transports by road took over.   

Mill Wings 

In 1978, the first wind turbine blade is cast at the factory on Rolles Møllevej. The first mill blade was 4.5 m long and was delivered to a customer in Vester Nebel. It turned out that Aage Skouboe and his son, Flemming, got hold of something that could be big – in several ways. After the two energy crises in 1973-74 and 1979, Denmark really began to think in different forms of energy, and this particularly benefited the wind turbine industry. During the 1990s, blade production grew explosively, so LM Glasfiber eventually gave up producing boats, and instead focused entirely on mill blades. Flemming Skouboe, who had now taken over the company after his father, chose to concentrate production in two locations in Denmark: the new plant at Vingen in Lunderskov and in Hammelev. Instead, the production sites in Vejen, Gesten, Kolding, Hårup, Kirkeby on Fyn, Engesvang and Rudkøbing were closed, while the workshop in Vamdrup was allowed to survive.

LM Glasfiber also began to grow outside the country. In 1993, a plant opened in India and the year after a plant in Spain, and in 1999 an LM plant opened in North Dakota in the United States.   

Sold overseas 

In March 2001 a bomb hit Lunderskov. Flemmnig Skouboe chose to sell his and his father’s work for well over DKK 2.1 billion to a foreign consortium led by Doughty Hanson & Co. Limited. However, the expansion continues both in Denmark and abroad. In fact, same year the first wind turbine blade factory opens in China, and in 2006 a factory opens in Canada. Lunderskov has also become too small a town for LM Glasfiber, because in 2008 the company moves the head office to Kolding.   

Flying from the town The expansion has since continued abroad, while the production of mill blades in Denmark has almost stopped. Expensive solutions, compared to abroad, and high transportation costs of blades up to 61.5 meters in length – a product that cannot be said to be particularly handy to transport – have resulted in LM Glasfiber deciding almost closing the production in Lunderskov. The small furniture factory that grew up is now so big that it completely flies from the town.   

Sources 

Thanks to the members of the Lunderskov Lokalhistoriske Arkiv for historical information and to the Kolding Stadsarkiv for assistance with photos.

As well as Jyske Vestkysten and Martin Wilde.

A little more LM history with pictures and facts. The two LM designers: Palle Mortensen (LM16, 21, 23, 24 and 27) and Bent Andersen (LM22, 26, 81, 28, 30, 32, Mermaid, Striker, Vitesse). 

Bent Juul Andersen 1: 

Bent Juul Andersen 2: 

Palle Mortensen, by Herluf Jensen. Honorary Diploma August 2017 

For those interested, the company’s historical development is excellently described and documented in Johan Nielsen’s description of “Skanderup Sogn gennem tiderne”. Pages 107 – 141 describe the development from Furniture Factory to LM Camping, LM Glasfiber, LM Windpower and General Electric

A separate extract of Johan Nielsen’s history of LM and a little wind turbine history is compiled here:

From Furniture Factory to LM Camping, LM Glasfiber, LM Windpower- and General Electric  

Thanks to Arne Bøge, Bøges Boats, in Lunderskov, and Peter Bonde for this edition of the story.