WesWorld

The company was founded in 1900 in the city of Fulda as a manufacturer of mechanical rubber goods. It survived the Great War in surprisingly good financial shape and in 1927 effected a merger with the Seiberling Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, in the United States. This gave the firm access to new technology for the manufacture of pneumatic tyres, which it began to produce in 1928. In 1935 it was the first German tyre manufacturer to produce its products with synthetic rubber. It is among the nations largest producers of tyres and other rubber products for automotive and aeronautical use.

This firm was originally founded in 1906 as Nitritfabrik GmbH to manufacture formic acid, tannins, hydrogen peroxide, borax, bromine salts and organic preparations for pharmaceutical and photographic purposes. It was converted into a joint stock company in 1923, when a new factory was erected in Berlin-Köpenick. A second factory was constructed in 1936 at Schleißheim, and plans have been announced to erect a third factory in Feldkirchen bei München.

This concern was established in 1923 in the wake of the Great War to undertake the construction of an oxygen plant in the industrial city of Münster. Wilhelm Albert was named technical director. The success of the initial operations prompted the expansion of the firm into the manufacture and distribution of petroleum and industrial lubricants, and opened the Westfalen Kraft und Schmierstoffewerke AG in 1927. Two years later the firm opened its first retail petrol station on the Albersloher Weg in Münster; by 1938 it was operating more than one hundred retail outlets under the aegis of the Westfalia Handelskonzern AG.

In 1936 the firm began the distribution and sale of industrial and technical gasses, having constructed a new air separation plant in Münster. In 1940 the firm organised the Schmierstoffraffinerie Salzbergen AG to operate a second lubricants plant in Salzbergen in Emsland.

This firm, a manufacturer of soap, washing and bleaching powders and other cleaning agents, was founded in 1869 by August Luhn and Theodor Leyerer as Germany’s first electric-powered soap factory. As early as 1900, the firm began to expand its production range; alongside soft soap, the company also took up the production of domestic and special curd soaps, hand cleaners, luxury soaps, shaving soaps, and washing powders. By 1914 the factory employed more than two hundred workers, and output exceeded more than 100,000 units per day. During the 1920s the works at Barmen-Wichlinghausen were expanded when the firm entered the field of bleaching powders and commercial laundry detergents. Today it employs more than four hundred workers in the production plant and more than one hundred sales staff across the country and in neighboring Belgium, France and the Netherlands.

This firm owes its origins to the precious-metals refinery operated by Ernst Roessler, established in 1843, which thirty years later was reorganised as the Deutsche Gold und Silber Scheide Anstalt. In its early phases in the company engaged in precious metals refining, preparation of solutions for the emerging photographic industry and the manufacture of glazes for the porcelain industry. The firm established its first foreign affiliate, the Roessler and Hasslacher Chemical Company, in the United States in 1882.

In 1898, together with the Aluminium Company of London, Degussa founded the Electro-Chemische Fabrik Natrium GmbH in Frankfurt. At Rheinfelden, on the Upper Rhine not far from the Swiss border, the firm established a plant to produce sodium using the Castner process. This substance was needed for manufacturing cyanide salts. Over the years the Rheinfelden plant, owned exclusively by the firm from 1918, was the site of many production developments, in particular of active oxygen compounds--peroxocompounds--and the fumed silica Aerosil. Later, catalytic converters for the purification of automobile exhaust emissions were made in Rheinfelden.

In 1905 the firm established a factory at Wesseling for the manufacture of sodium perborate chemicals, necessary for the manufacture of detergents, and in 1907 it established a factory at Weissenstein, in Carinthia, for the manufacture of hydrogen peroxide. In 1910 the firm acquired a majority share in the precious metals refinery G. Siebert in Hanau, and, in the aftermath of the Great War, it acquired the precious metals refinery Doctor Richter and Compagnie, in Pforzheim.

During the 1920s the firm diversified into coal-based chemical technologies, acquiring Holzverkohlungs-Industrie AG of Constance and the Verein für Chemische Industrie of Frankfurt. Using technology gained through these two subsidiaries the firm was able to partner with the Distillers Company of Edinburgh in the firm British Industrial Solvents, a manufacturer of acetone, acetaldehyde, acetic acid, and butanol. In 1932 the firm purchased the assets of a chemical factory in Kalscheuren that had pioneered the industrial application of carbon black. Applying this technology to the manufacture of automobile tyres the firm formed the Russwerke Dortmund GmbH to manufacture carbon black for the expanding German automotive industry. In 1935, continuing its diversification program, the firm acquired the Chemisch-Pharmazeutische AG Bad Homburg and entered the growing field of synthetic pharmaceuticals.

In 1938 the firm joined with Bergwerksgesellschaft Hibernia AG to form the Chemische Werke Hüls GmbH, a firm dedicated to the manufacture of synthetic rubber and other elastomers.


Subsidiary companies of the firm include:

Chemische Fabrik Kalscheuren AG, Kalscheuren (carbon-based chemical additives)
Chemische Fabrik Stockhausen AG, Stockhausen (industrial chemicals and fertilizers)
Chemische Fabrik Weissenstein AG, Weissenstein (industrial chemicals)
Chemische Fabrik Wesseling AG, Wesseling (industrial chemicals)
Chemisch-Pharmazeutische AG Bad Homburg, Frankfurt (pharmaceuticals)
Electro-Chemische Fabrik Natrium GmbH, Rheinfelden (catalytic chemicals)
Holzverkohlungs-Industrie AG, Constance (industrial chemicals)
Metallraffinerie Richter AG, Pforzheim (gold and silver refining)
Metallraffinerie Siebert AG, Hanau (platinum metals refining)
Verein für Chemische Industrie GmbH, Frankfurt (industrial chemicals)


Affiliated companies of the firm include:

In Germany

Chemische Werke Hüls GmbH, Hüls (synthetic rubber)
Russwerke Dortmund GmbH, Dortmund (carbon black)

Abroad

British Industrial Solvents Ltd., Hull, England (industrial chemicals)
Roessler and Hasslacher Chemical Company, Niagara Falls, New York, United States (industrial chemicals)

Germany’s largest privately-owned chemical company, Henkel und Compagnie was formed in September 1876 when Friedrich Henkel founded a small firm in Aachen to manufacture detergents. Two years later the firm introduced ‘Henkel’s Bleaching Powder’, one of the first German consumer products to bear a brand name. That same year the firm moved to larger facilities in Düsseldorf. Henkel recognised the power that the control of raw materials confers, and began to aggressively move to acquire sources of supply for the main ingredients of the firm’s detergents; accordingly, in 1884, the firm acquired the Rheinische Wasserglasfabrik and began making its own sodium silicate. The firm also invested heavily into chemical research, pursuing new processes to manufacture both its raw materials and new products for the burgeoning German consumer market.

The year 1907 was exceptionally important for product development. It marked the launch of Henkel's arguably most famous brand, the revolutionary detergent Persil. The name came from two of its most important ingredients, a perborate and a silicate. In the early 1900s, Henkel's use of brand names was innovative. Its products were easy to spot by their packaging and were widely distributed. Henkel had been quick to set up marketing operations in Germany's neighbor countries. In 1913 Henkel opened a foreign subsidiary, the first of many, at Basel-Pratteln in Switzerland.

As the firm recovered from the disruptions brought on by the Great War, it embarked on a new round of expansion, buoyed by the strong demand for its cleaning products. A new factory was constructed at Genthin in central Germany and new products – glues and adhesives – were added to the product line. In 1924 the firm began the manufacture of cleaning products aimed at the industrial and commercial markets, including such sectors as food processing and industrial manufacture. To assure control of the materials required for these new products the firm acquired the Thompson-Werke in 1930 and two years later it bought the Deutsche Hydrierwerke. Henkel's acquisition of Böhme-Fettchemie, Chemnitz, in 1935, followed the latter's launch of a new type of detergent named Fewa. This synthetic product, designed to wash delicate fabrics, was the first of its kind.

The firm also established or acquired subsidiaries abroad, in some cases merely marketing firms, in other as factories for the production of raw materials or intermediate products. In 1928 the firm purchased the National Red Oil and Soap Company of Newark, New Jersey, in the United States, reorganised the company as Nopco Chemicals, and began to manufacture industrial detergents and cleaning agents. In 1930 it purchased the Fabricacion General Iberica de Colores of Barcelona, and three years later established Productos Quimicos Sevillanos in Seville to undertake the manufacture of household detergents. In 1935 it reached a reciprocal agreement with the Union Générale de Savonnerie for the licenced manufacture of Henkel brand consumer products in France.

During the latter part of the 1930s the firm continued to acquire complementary firms in the manufacture or distribution of chemicals and raw materials. In 1940 it formed Papier und Pappe AG to bring together the several factories of the firm engaged in the manufacture of industrial and consumer papers.


Factories of the firm include:

Henkel und Compagnie KG, Düsseldorf-Holthausen (household and industrial chemicals)
Henkel und Compagnie KG, Düsseldorf-Oberbilk (industrial chemicals)
Henkel und Compagnie KG, Genthin (household and industrial chemicals)
Henkel und Compagnie KG, Heidelberg (industrial chemicals)

Subsidiary companies of the firm include:

In Germany

Böhme-Fettchemie AG, Chemnitz (household chemicals and consumer products)
Brennstoff Chemikalien Transport AG, Mülheim (specialist chemicals transport)
Deutsche Hydrierwerke AG, Rodleben (industrial chemicals)
Matthes und Weber GmbH, Duisburg (household chemicals and consumer products)
Papier und Pappe AG, Inden (industrial paper products)
Papier und Pappe AG, Monheim (industrial paper products)
Papier und Pappe AG, Oberau (consumer paper goods)
Papier und Pappe AG, Süchteln (consumer paper goods)
Papier und Pappe AG, Tarnowker Mühle (consumer paper goods)
Papier und Pappe AG, Westerhüsen (industrial paper products)
Thompson-Werke AG, Herborn-Schönbach (industrial chemicals)

Abroad

Fabricacion General Iberica de Colores S.A., Barcelona, Iberia (industrial chemicals)
Henkel und Compagnie AG, Basel-Pratteln, Switzerland (household and industrial chemicals)
Nopco Chemicals Inc., Newark, United States (industrial chemicals)
Productos Quimicos Sevillanos S.A., Seville, Iberia (household chemicals and consumer products)
Produits Chimiques du Sidobre-Sinnova S.A, Liege, Belgium (industrial chemicals)

Affiliated companies of the firm include:

Chemische Fabrik Grünau AG, Berlin-Grünau (cosmetics and consumer products)
Chemische Fabrik Lehrte AG, Heidenau (pharmaceuticals and consumer products)
Farbwerke Ardinit GmbH, Schönbach (chemical dyes and colorants)
Kepec Chemische Fabrik GmbH, Bonn (chemical colorants and solvents)
Sichel-Werke AG, Hannover-Linden (cosmetics and consumer products)

This firm was founded in 1927 by the chemical engineer Heinrich Freudenthal to develop and market veterinary and medical products. By the 1930s however it had expanded its product line to embrace petroleum-based lubricants and fluids for the automotive industry – including motor oils and greases and the specialist fluids for brake and transmission systems. The firm’s commitment to maintaining high quality levels for all its products ensured that products bearing the ‘Pentosin’ brand name were specified by many of Germany’s automobile manufacturers for use in their vehicles.

The firm’s headquarters and chief manufacturing facility is at Wedel, near Hamburg, and a second works has been established at Linz in the Austrian provinces. Manufacturing subsidiaries have been established in Czechoslovakia, Iberia and Switzerland, and sales subsidiaries exist in all the major countries of Europe.

This firm, based in Hamburg, manufactures and distributes products in the areas of skin care, wound dressings and sticking tapes. Its origins lie in the pharmacy of Paul Beiersdorf, who in 1882 patented a medicated sticking plaster, marketed under the name Guttaplaste. Between 1882 and 1890 Beiersdorf began making other products as well: stick-salves, paste sticks, and medicinal soaps; but the adhesive bandage line, which soon grew to include 100 types, remained his bestselling and most important product.

In 1890 the pharmacy was converted to a limited liability company under the directorship of Oscar Troplowitz, and activities were transferred to a new, modern factory at Altona. The firm continued to develop its line of sticking tapes, introducing the well-known brands Paraplast in 1896 and Leukoplast in 1901; within a decade the tape was being used in hospitals throughout the world.

Working on Leukoplast led the firm into completely new product lines. In 1897, the firm had developed a brand new, self-adhering tape which was however not suitable for use on human skin. It was marketed instead as a mechanic's tape under the names Citoplast and Lassoplast. Beiersdorf advertised for repairing bicycle tires and other mechanical uses, the first such tapes in the world. In 1900 the firm introduced the first commercially produced dentifrice, Pebeco, which within five years of introduction became the firm’s best selling product.

Beiersdorf manufactured a wide range of products during the first decade of the Twentieth Century, including soaps, depilatories, mouthwashes, pomades, and shaving soaps. A lip balm in stick form, called Lobello, became one of Beiersdorf's most popular products of all time. First sold in 1909, it remains the market leader in many countries. In 1911 Beiersdorf purchased the patent for a material called Eucerit. Developed by Dr. Isaac Lifschütz, Eucerit was created as a stable, water-soluble foundation for medicinal salves. Beiersdorf took over the manufacture of Eucerit, but Troplowitz had the idea to use it as the base for a new skin product, called Nivea Creme. Beiersdorf expanded quickly to foreign markets – it signed an exclusive distribution contract with the New York firm Lehn and Fink in 1892. In 1898 it began exporting its products to Austria-Hungary; business in Austria was so good that Beiersdorf opened a branch in Vienna in January 1914. The company opened a London office together with a warehouse for distribution in the United Kingdom in 1909. By the start of the Great War there were production facilities in Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Mexico, Moscow, New York, Paris, and Sydney Australia, and sales representatives in twenty-nine countries around the world.

During the 1920s, however, the company brought out some seventy new or significantly modified products; about half were personal care items such as tooth powders, hair products, children's creams, lavender soaps, hair removal creams, sunburn creams, and insect bite salves. In 1921 Hansaplast adhesive bandages for cuts, scrapes, and other wounds appeared on the market. It was a product that remains an important part of Beiersdorf's line to this day. In 1929 Beiersdorf marketed the first deodorant in salve form. Beiersdorf researchers working with Doctor Carl Mannich made a major breakthrough when they developed a reliable heart medication from digitalis. Digitalis, a plant derivative, was known to regulate the heartbeat, but it had to be administered in precise dosages: under-medication was ineffective but over-medication was fatal. Mannich isolated the active chemical in a stable form from the Digitalis lanata plant. Beiersdorf took over the production and marketing of the medicine, called Pandigal, in 1927. The drug became the foundation of the company's pharmaceutical division.

In 1935 the firm introduced a transparent sticking tape that could be used in the office or home. Marketed as Tesafilm, it has become an international best-seller and a major product line in its own right.

The origins of this concern lie in the latter quarter of the Nineteenth Century, when the expanding German market prompted the foundation of a number of small firms producing gelatin, both for consumption as foodstuffs but more importantly as a photographic gelatin, which required a high-quality, uniformly produced industrial product. In May 1889 two of Germany’s leading manufacturers, Friedrich Drescher und Compagnie of Schweinfurt and Gelatinefabricken Heinrichs of Hoechst, merged to form the concern, adopting at that time the trademark “Gelita”. Five years later the Göppinger Gelatine and Leimfabrik, which had been founded in 1880 by Paul and Heinrich Koepff, merged with the concern through an exchange of shares. The combined firm dominated the German market for photographic gelatin, and rapidly expanded its sales abroad; by 1900 the company had established branches in London and Paris, and a sales office in New York, and was producing almost 350 tons of gelatin annually.

The concern suffered serious losses in the Great War – raw materials were in short supply and it was cut off from lucrative foreign markets; demand for its principal product – photographic gelatin – dropped and an attempt to promote gelatin as a nutritional supplement could not make good the shortfall in demand. Nevertheless, with the coming of peace, the concern was able to weather the storm, relying principally on its long-term relationship with the American firm of Eastman Kodak. The concern had begun dealing with Eastman Kodak in 1893 and after the Great War ended they resumed their relationship, forging the first German-American joint venture with the construction of the so-called Odin-Werke - a state-of-the-art factory for photographic gelatin in Eberbach. Completed in 1922, the Odin-Werke was a classic company town that included houses for workers, stores, company-organized social clubs, and such.

In the 1930s the firm sought to balance its reliance on photographic gelatin with the continued production of food-grade gelatins for sale to Germany’s expanding food-product industry, and developed new types of gelatin for pharmaceutical use. Development of the latter was funded in part by IG Farben, who in 1940 took a five-percent minority interest in the concern.


Subsidiaries of the firm include:

Chemische Werke Stoess AG, Eberbach (pharmaceutical grade gelatin)

This firm was founded in 1928 by the materials engineer and entrepreneur Fritz Muller, who established in Barmen a factory for the production of insulators. Initially the firm's primary customers were the many textile mills in the vicinity of Barmen, but soon the firm's products found demand in the electrical, electro-technical and automotive industries.

In 1932 the firm began to produce polyvinyl chloride plastics in several forms, becoming a global leader in the application of PVC to insulation materials. The company adopted the trade name Coroplast for its products.

A new factory was constructed in 1942, where more than two thousand employees are engaged in the production of various insulating tapes, tubes and wires. The works includes its own research department, where engineers are investigating new thermosetting plastic compounds and new applications for existing products.

The firm was formed in 1939 as a joint venture of the Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie and the Vereinigte Norddeutschen Mineralölwerke to construct Germany’s first large-scale petrochemical facility at Wesseling, near Köln. The plant constructed at a cost of more than sixty million Reichsmarks manufactures ethylene and the further processing to polyethylene, which is marketed under the trade name, “Lupolen”. The plant went on stream in 1943, with production originally limited to twenty thousand tonnes per annum. The original facility has undergone several phases of expansion and today covers more than 270 hectares. The productive capacity of the plant has grown to more than 125,000 tonnes of polyethylene and 150,000 tonnes of ethylene.

This enterprise, headquartered in Berlin-Charlottenburg, operates the world’s largest refinery for coal tar products at Erkner in Brandenburg. It was founded in 1849 by Julius Rütgers on the foundations of the Teerproduktenfabrik Rauxel-Westfalen, a company established by his father in 1847 but which had become insolvent. Rütgers placed the company on a sound basis and concentrated on the production of railway sleepers impregnated with tar oil as preservatives. Given the boom in railway construction across Germany at that time the firm throve and soon came to dominate the market in the western districts of Germany. In 1854 Rütgers established a branch factory in Erkner to serve the Prussian market.

This factory expanded and became a true coal tar factory wherein a full range of chemicals was derived from coal tar. Not only did the factory have its own battery of coke ovens but it drew upon the tar waste from the gas stations in Berlin and the surrounding region. By 1899, Rütgers had built seventy-seven impregnation plants in large parts of Europe, which soaked the sleepers with tar products from Erkner and other company-owned distillations for thousands of kilometres of railway lines.

In 1908 the firm joined forces with the inventor Leo Hendrik Baekeland to found the firm Bakelite AG, to exploit Baekeland’s patents for a thermosetting plastic based on phenolic resin – which the plant at Erkner produced in abundance as a by-product of its distillation process. In 1910 Bakelite AG was the first company in the world to manufacture plastic parts in industrial production. The range of products ranged from housings and fuses (because of the insulating properties of Bakelite) to everyday objects (telephones, radios, fountain pens, and so on) and military applications (primers, aircraft propellers). Bakelite could be pressed into any desired shape during production, but afterwards it was no longer deformable like thermoplastics. It was heat resistant, insoluble, inexpensive to manufacture, and did not conduct electricity.

Rütgerswerke continues the production of coal tar products at numerous facilities across Germany and throughout Europe. Through its Bakelite subsidiary it pursues development of newer types of plastic though retaining phenolic resin plastics as its core product line.

This enterprise came into being in July 1924, bringing together the interests of the Bayerische Stickstoffwerke AG, the Mitteldeutsche Stickstoffwerke AG, and the Lonzawerke AG.

The Bayerische Stickstoffwerke had been founded in 1908 to erect a factory and associated power station at Trostberg, in northern Chiemgau, for the manufacture of calcium cyanamide and was, in fact, the first factory in Germany to make it on an industrial scale. The cyanamide plant of Piesteritz had been established in March 1915 at the insistence of the Reich Treasury with the assistance of Bayerische Stickstoffwerke as part of the economic effort of the Great War. In its aftermath the plant was privatised as the Mitteldeutsche Stickstoffwerke AG, with Bayerische Stickstoffwerke holding a half interest. The Lonzawerke plant at Waldshut was founded in 1913 as a subsidiary of the Swiss-based Lonza AG of Basel. The plant produced calcium carbide and acetylene.

In 1920 the three existing works had a combined output of 80,000 tonnes of nitrogenous fertilizers per annum, which has been increased over the years as existing plants were expanded and modernised. In 1942 at new factory at Istein in Markgräflerland was commissioned.

In 1880 the Belgian firm of Solvay et Compagnie, established in 1863, took over an existing soda factory at Wyhlen, which at that time produced but twenty tonnes of soda per day. This became the foundation stone of the enterprise’s activities in Germany; three years later a new and larger plant was started at Bernburg and the Deutsche Solvay-Werke was formed in 1885 to take over the management of both the Wyhlen and Bernburg plants. At Bernburg, the mining of potash salt was begun in 1890, followed in 1896 by the acquisition of the saltworks and soda factory at Chateau Salins in Alsace-Lorraine. A second factory at Bernburg was opened that same year and the works at Osternienburg was established in 1898. By 1900 the enterprise produced no less than 175,000 tonnes of soda – nearly sixty percent of the total amount produced in Germany that year. The soda factory at Rheinberg went into operation in 1907. The processing of salt brine from wells at Borth began at Rheinberg in 1908, and in 1910 rights were acquired to salt brine deposits in the Mihla districts of Ebenau, Buchenau, Hahnroda, and Eschenborn.

While the Chateau Salins facilities were lost in the wake of the Great War the firm continued to prosper. In 1927 the firm acquired the Kaliwerke Friedrichshall AG, which had itself been founded in 1899. A manufacturing plant at Buchanau commenced operations in 1927 to process the salt brine deposits there, and in 1933 the production of evaporated salt was begun at Rheinberg. The Alkaliwerke Westeregeln AG was acquired in 1939, the same year in which the enterprise’s soda production reacted 725,000 tonnes, over eighty percent of total Reich production. More recently, a majority stake in Saline Ludwigshalle AG of Bad Wimpfen has been acquired.