CTS Clima Temperatur Systeme GmbH was founded in 1996 by Peter Jehs, Rainer Modes, and Helmut Maute in Hechingen, in the Baden-Württemberg region of southern Germany. The company's legal registered address is Lotzenäcker 21, 72379 Hechingen. As of 2023–2024, CTS employs approximately 180 people and has delivered more than 12,000 environmental test installations worldwide. In March 2024, CTS began construction of a new 3,000 m² facility at the Hechingen site, primarily for the production of walk-in chambers with integrated test facilities. This expansion was announced in the context of stated continued growth. In May 2010, Peter Jehs stepped down from operative management and his son Philipp Jehs assumed his responsibilities, working alongside managing partners Helmut Maute and Rainer Modes. CTS operates a Netherlands distribution entity, CTS Nederland B.V., which publishes news and product information in English at ctsnederland.nl. CTS also offers DKD-calibration services for environmental simulation devices, including equipment from other manufacturers.
Product line: standard temperature and climate chambers
CTS publishes a standard chamber range under the CTS brand, organised by function.
T/C series — temperature and climate chambers. Standard reach-in chambers for temperature-only (T series) and temperature/humidity (C series) testing. Available in multiple workspace volumes.
TS/CS series — stress screening chambers. Temperature and climatic stress screening test cabinets. The published performance classes for the TS/CS series are 5 K/min, 10 K/min, and 15 K/min as standard configurations. By further increasing the compressor and heating capacity, rates of change up to 30 K/min are achievable. High outputs of circulating air ensure transmission to the test item. The series includes a software-based min/max temperature limiter, a panoramic window (570 × 710 mm from the 200-litre model), LED illumination, and a separate Pt100 sensor for measurement at the test specimen that can be switched to serve as a control sensor.
TSS series — temperature shock chambers. The CTS thermal shock chambers achieve temperature changes up to 100 K/min. The compressed-air dryer system used as standard allows up to 3,000 test cycles without defrosting. The published standards compliance covers DIN, IEC, and MIL specifications for thermal shock testing. The distinction between thermal shock and temperature cycling is covered in Thermal Shock Testing: Why Slow Ramps Miss the Failures That Matter.
TW/CW series — walk-in and drive-in chambers. Temperature-only (TW) and temperature/humidity (CW) walk-in and drive-in test chambers, designed to customer specifications by CTS sales and project engineers. CTS describes these as suitable for testing large assemblies, vehicles, and system-level configurations requiring personnel access or drive-in capability. The walk-in vs. reach-in decision framework is at Walk-In or Reach-In? The Environmental Test Chamber Size Decision Engineers Get Wrong.
Pharmaceutical climate test chambers. CTS publishes a dedicated pharmaceutical testing cabinet range described as designed for long-term stability testing. These chambers are positioned for ICH-referenced stability applications.
Combined vibration and climate systems. CTS offers combined systems integrating vibration testing with temperature and humidity chambers. These are described in the product overview alongside the standard chamber range. The rationale for combined environment testing is covered in Combined Environment Testing: The Only Way to Find Failures That Need Two Stresses to Appear.
Energy storage testing equipment. CTS includes battery and energy storage testing equipment in its product range, aligned with the growth of EV battery qualification programmes. The battery testing context is at EV Battery Environmental Testing.
Calibration services
CTS provides DKD (Deutscher Kalibrierdienst — German Calibration Service) calibration services for environmental simulation devices. This includes calibration of equipment from other manufacturers, not only CTS products. DKD calibration is the German national calibration accreditation system, traceable to PTB (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt), the German national metrology institute. The calibration context for environmental test chambers is covered in Environmental Test Chamber Calibration: What It Covers, What It Doesn't, and What to Do About the Gap.
Facility expansion: 2024
In March 2024, CTS announced the start of construction on a new facility area of approximately 3,000 m² at the Hechingen site. The primary purpose of the new building is production of walk-in chambers with integrated test facilities. The expansion also includes office space for the growing CTS team. CTS described this as evidence of continued growth trajectory at the Hechingen location.
Distribution partnerships
On 30 March 2023, CTS announced a sales and service partnership with Poppe + Potthoff, a German technical company. CTS Nederland B.V. serves as the Dutch market distribution entity. Additional distribution and service partners operate in other markets. CTS products are distributed under the CTS brand name in all markets.
Standards alignment
CTS products are documented as compliant with DIN, IEC, and MIL standards relevant to the specific product category. The company holds ISO 9001 quality management certification. The broader standards landscape is covered in IEC, MIL-STD, ASTM, ISO: The Environmental Testing Standards Map Every Engineer Needs.
Segments not in the published catalogue
CTS does not publish a dedicated HALT chamber product line with six-degree-of-freedom pneumatic vibration tables of the type used in HALT/HASS methodology. The company publishes vibration-combined chambers but the specific HALT pneumatic table configuration is not listed in the standard catalogue. For HALT-specific systems, manufacturers with documented dedicated product lines include ESPEC North America (Qualmark product line) and Thermotron. The full manufacturer comparison is at The Top 10 Environmental Test Chamber Manufacturers in the World.
Contact
Headquarters: CTS Clima Temperatur Systeme GmbH, Lotzenäcker 21, 72379 Hechingen, Germany. Phone: +49 (0) 7471 / 9850-0. Website: cts-umweltsimulation.de
Netherlands: CTS Nederland B.V. Website: ctsnederland.nl
100 K/min: a number that matters to almost nobody, and matters enormously to a few
CTS Clima Temperatur Systeme's TSS thermal shock series transfers specimens between hot and cold zones fast enough to deliver a 100 K/min rate of temperature change at the DUT — roughly three times what most thermal shock chambers achieve. For the overwhelming majority of qualification programmes, this number is irrelevant. IEC 60068-2-14 Test Na requires a transfer time under 30 seconds between zones, not a specific K/min figure, and most chambers comfortably meet that requirement. If your test plan cites Test Na with standard transfer times, CTS's extra speed buys you nothing you can use.
But for a narrow set of applications — ceramic capacitor qualification, glass-to-metal seal testing, multilayer ceramic chip (MLCC) screening, and some semiconductor package-level thermal shock protocols that specify transfer times under 10 seconds — the additional speed is the difference between a test that induces the failure mode and one that doesn't. CTS built its reputation in the German automotive and electronics supply chain on exactly this kind of high-stress, high-precision niche capability.
Company history and manufacturing base
CTS Clima Temperatur Systeme was founded in 1996 in Hechingen, Baden-Württemberg — the same region of southern Germany that hosts a dense cluster of precision engineering and automotive supplier companies. The company has remained privately held and manufactures exclusively at its Hechingen facility, a deliberately narrower footprint than the multi-site, multi-brand structures of larger competitors like Weiss Technik.
This single-site model produces the same trade-off seen in other German precision manufacturers covered in this series — Binder and Memmert among them. Deep institutional knowledge concentrated in one location, shorter internal communication chains between engineering and production, but lead times tied directly to Hechingen's capacity rather than a distributed manufacturing network.
The TS and CS series: standard climatic and temperature testing
CTS's general-purpose product range covers the TS series (temperature chambers) and CS series (climatic chambers with humidity control), spanning configurations from small benchtop units through floor-standing chambers exceeding 1,000 litres. Temperature range across the standard product line is -70°C to +180°C, with humidity control from 10% to 98% RH on CS models.
Published ramp rates for the TS/CS series reach up to 30 K/min on the high-performance variants — faster than Binder or Memmert's standard offerings, in the same range as ESPEC's AR Series. This positions CTS as a credible option for automotive and electronics qualification programmes requiring fast thermal transitions without the cost premium of a dedicated HALT system. As with any published ramp rate, the loaded figure for your specific DUT thermal mass should be confirmed before specifying — the calculation method is at Loaded Ramp Rate Calculator.
DKD calibration services: an internal capability most manufacturers outsource
CTS maintains its own DKD-accredited calibration laboratory (Deutscher Kalibrierdienst, the German calibration service accreditation body, now operating under the DAkkS national accreditation framework). Most chamber manufacturers either rely on third-party calibration providers or offer calibration as a service contracted out to accredited partners. CTS's in-house DKD capability means calibration certificates for CTS chambers carry traceability directly through the manufacturer rather than through an intermediary — relevant for customers in regulated industries who need a clean, short traceability chain in their quality documentation.
This also means CTS customers can typically get faster turnaround on calibration and recalibration cycles, since the work doesn't need to be scheduled with an external provider. For a CS or TS chamber running continuous qualification cycles where calibration windows compete with production schedules, this is a genuine operational advantage. The broader calibration framework — what it covers and what gaps remain even with accredited calibration — is at Environmental Test Chamber Calibration.
Walk-in chambers and large-format testing
Beyond standard reach-in configurations, CTS manufactures walk-in environmental rooms for large component and full-vehicle subsystem testing — a product category that requires different engineering than scaling up a reach-in chamber. Walk-in rooms need distributed air handling to maintain uniformity across a much larger working volume, structural floor loading capacity for heavy test articles, and personnel safety systems (oxygen monitoring, emergency egress, audible alarms) that reach-in chambers don't require. CTS's walk-in product line serves automotive and industrial customers in the southern German manufacturing corridor where the company has its deepest customer relationships.
Where CTS is the obvious choice — and where it isn't
For component-level testing requiring transfer times under 10 seconds — MLCC qualification, ceramic seal testing, or any protocol where standard thermal shock chambers don't transfer fast enough — CTS's TSS series is one of the few options on the market built specifically for that requirement. This is a narrow but real niche, and CTS occupies it with a level of focus that larger, broader-line manufacturers don't match.
For general climatic and temperature cycling within Germany or neighbouring markets, CTS is a credible mid-tier option competing directly with Binder and Memmert on price and lead time, with the added benefit of in-house DKD calibration. Outside Europe, CTS has limited service infrastructure compared to globally distributed manufacturers like ESPEC or Thermotron — confirm service coverage in your region before specifying CTS for a programme outside the DACH region. The full procurement framework is at Environmental Test Chamber Buyer's Guide.