Blanco (Oberderdingen)
| BLANCO Group
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | GmbH + Co KG |
| founding | 1925 |
| Seat | Oberderdingen , Baden-Wuerttemberg |
| management |
|
| Number of employees | 1515 worldwide (2019) |
| sales | EUR 395 million (2019) |
| Branch | kitchen |
| Website | www.blanco.com |
The Blanco Group ( spelling : BLANCO Group ) is a German family company based in Oberderdingen ( Baden-Württemberg ) and a manufacturer of household sinks . The company was founded in 1925. Since the 1930s there has been a cooperation with the EGO group of companies , also based in Oberderdingen , which took over large parts of Blanco after the 1973 oil crisis. The production of commercial kitchen equipment and hospital furniture was outsourced to the independent Blanco Professional Group in 2007 .
history
The company was founded in Oberderdingen in 1925 as Blanc + Co by Heinrich Blanc and August Treffinger. Initially, the company was based on two wooden barracks that Blanc had acquired second-hand from the chemical factory in Durlach . The company's first products were watercraft for coal stoves. Blanc recognized a need for such products during his training at the stove manufacturer Lämmle in Bretten. Lämmle was therefore one of the company's first customers. In 1928 Blanco moved into its first massive workshop. Hot water bottles and large kitchen appliances expanded the product range in the following years. The company survived the global economic crisis of 1929 without any problems. After partner Treffinger left in 1930, Blanc began to cooperate with the entrepreneur Karl Fischer and his company EGO from 1931 , which moved from Oberweiler to Oberderdingen and produced electric stoves. In the future, Blanco mainly manufactured accessories for electric stoves. In 1937 the product range was switched to pure aluminum.
During the Second World War, the company was placed under the war economy. Torpedo heads and goulash cannons were created in the large press hall built in 1942 .
After the Second World War, before the currency reform, Blanco produced devices for the dairy industry and butchery items. After the currency reform, an additional plant was built in Sulzfeld. The first factory barrack there burned down in 1950, after which a massive factory hall was built according to plans by the Stuttgart architect Decker. In the early 1950s, stainless steel became the company's most important material, from which kitchen sinks in particular were made. In 1959, over 100,000 stainless steel sinks were manufactured annually.
After the death of founder Heinrich Blanc in 1960, his son Heinz Blanc succeeded him. Under his leadership, new plants were built in Michelfeld (1961) and Kronau (1962), and the facilities in Sulzfeld and Kronau were expanded in 1968/69. Distribution warehouses and sales offices were set up in several major German cities, a Dutch subsidiary was also founded in 1965, and a separate training workshop was set up in Kürnbach in 1967.
In 1969 the company had over 1,700 employees and manufactured the 4 millionth sink, which was ceremoniously handed over to the youth village in Stuttgart-Feuerbach.
The company expanded tremendously in the early 1970s. The works in Oberderdingen and Kronau were structurally expanded in 1971/72, at the same time new subsidiaries were founded in Belgium, Austria, France and Switzerland. In 1972 Blanco opened its own data center in Sternenfels, where the first interactive accounts receivable accounting system in Germany went into operation with the IBM 360 Model 25 .
After the 1973 oil crisis , Blanco got into financial difficulties. The factory in Michelfeld and several sales offices were closed, and the workforce was reduced from over 2,000 to less than 1,000. The company was finally saved when the long-term cooperation partner EGO acquired large parts of the company. Reinhard Fischer took over the management. In the following period, the product range was divided into the areas of household technology, large kitchen accessories and the newly added medical technology. Large orders such as the equipping of 73 Russian fish wholesale markets in 1975 and the sale of the Kronau kitchen and table equipment factory in 1978 contributed to further consolidation.
In the 1980s, Blanco continued to manufacture household sinks, large canteen equipment and operating tables . By the late 1980s, the company had 1,400 employees and served customers in around 100 countries. A new subsidiary was founded in the USA and a new factory for household sinks was built in Sinsheim. In 1990, Blanco took over the manufacture and sale of crockery stackers and conveyor belts from Welbilt, as well as the Speyer refrigeration technology manufacturer Klais , which expanded the company's canteen kitchen division.
In 1991 the subsidiary Blanco Med GmbH was founded, which relocated the production of medical technology to a company site in Saalfeld that was previously used by Zeiss , which freed up capacities at the main plant in Oberderdingen.
In 1993 Frank Straub, a grandson of the founder Heinrich Blanc, took over the management. In 1994 the 25 millionth sink was produced. In 1995, Blanco took over the Mirolin production facilities in Toronto in order to supply the North American market with household sinks. In 1998, Blanco took over Wolff Kunststofftechnik , which manufactured catering transport containers, moved its headquarters to Leipzig and renamed it Blanco Polymer Technologies . In the same year, Blanco parted with part of the previous medical product division with the sale of the plant in Saalfeld. Instead, a new press shop in Sulzfeld and a new central warehouse in Bruchsal were built. In 1999 Blanco acquired a 25 percent stake in the Indian sink manufacturer Phoenix , and the company also expanded further with a subsidiary in the Czech Republic.
Around 2000, Blanco gave up the production of operating tables completely and in the future relied on the production of cabinet systems for clinics in the medical division. In 2007 the logistics center in Bruchsal was significantly expanded with a new building.
Two legally independent companies have been operating under the BLANCO brand since 2007. The BLANCO GmbH + CO KG and its subsidiaries focus as BLANCO group of system solutions for the kitchen in a private household. The Catering Systems and Medical Care divisions were combined with the new Industrial Components product division in the BLANCO Professional Group (previously BLANCO CS GmbH + CO KG).
The BLANCO Group currently produces kitchen sinks made of stainless steel, SILGRANIT and ceramics, kitchen fittings, waste systems and the BLANCO SteelArt sub-brand for exclusive individual solutions made of stainless steel and markets them in almost 100 countries.
Locations
- Oberderdingen : company headquarters and head office
- Sulzfeld : Production of sinks and worktops made of stainless steel
- Sinsheim / Rhein-Neckar-Kreis, Toronto / Canada and Most / Czech Republic: Production of composite sinks made from SILGRANIT PuraDur
- Istanbul / Turkey: Production of ceramic sinks
- Bruchsal / Baden: European logistics center
Sales companies in Belgium, China, France, Great Britain, Canada, Austria, Russia, Switzerland, Singapore, Ukraine, USA
literature
- Karl-Heinz Glaser among others: Heinrich Blanc, Karl Fischer - founder of two global companies . ifu verlag regionalkultur, Ubstadt-Weiher et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-89735-443-2 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Corporate philosophy: BLANCO GmbH + Co KG. Retrieved May 27, 2020 .
- ↑ Press release May 26, 2020
- ↑ blanco-professional.com
- ^ A b Florian Langenscheidt: German standards / brands of the century. 16th, revised edition. Gabler, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-8349-2044-7 .