The product portfolio of Wagner & Co., a Dortmund-based machine tool manufacturer founded in 1865, was geared towards the demands of the iron and steel industry. Products supplied by Wagner & Co. included lathes, plate shears, punching machines, plate levelers, millers, and cylindrical boring machines. In the 1920s, as part of its collaboration with Adolf Kreuser GmbH, the company added ring and wheel rolling mills as well as hydraulic presses to its range. In the decades that followed, Wagner & Co. maintained its independence in spite of its ties with corporate groups such as Vereinigte Stahlwerke, Rheinische Stahlwerke, and Thyssen.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the company with global operations increasingly shifted its production focus to ring rolling plants. Hydraulic radial-axial ring rolling machines of type RAW account for almost 50% of turnover. Its areas of specialism included the supply of a machine for the automatic fitting of stator assemblies to guideway beams for the test section of the Transrapid magnetic levitation railway, and a counter-roller flow-turning machine for manufacturing booster casings for the European ARIANE 5 rocket.

In 1997, SMS Eumuco acquired the company that had now become known as Wagner Dortmund Banning Ringwalztechnik with its site in Witten.