Dr. C. Otto & Comp.

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Dr. C. Otto & Comp.
legal form
founding August 1, 1872
Seat Bochum
Branch chemical plant engineering
Website www.pd-refractories.com

Dr. C. Otto in Bochum, main entrance and stones for export
Dr. C. Otto in Bochum, from the Ruhr from
"Westerwald clay industry" in Breitscheid

Dr. C. Otto & Comp. was a company with locations in Bochum and Breitscheid . The company was later continued to operate as Dr.C.Otto Feuerfest GmbH, with Preussag being the sole shareholder . The company's headquarters in Bochum-Dahlhausen is still operated today as the Dr.C.Otto site (PD Refractories GmbH Dr. C. Otto) by Preiss-Daimler PD Refractories, after they had bought the company from the previous owner in 2002.

history

On August 1, 1872 , the chemist Carlos Otto , the mine director Wilhelm Hiby (jun.) From Burgaltendorf , his father Wilhelm Hiby (senior), owner of the Unterste Pöting farm in Obersprockhövel , the Witten entrepreneur Louis Constanz Berger and the Duisburg smelting director Franz Giesse before the District court in Hattingen a society under the company Dr. C. Otto & Comp. in Dahlhausen (Ruhr) near Bochum.

The purpose of the company was the “factory production and utilization of refractory products of all kinds, the manufacture and utilization of coke, as well as the extraction and utilization of all raw materials and intermediate products of these factories”.

The reason for the settlement in the flood-prone Dahlhausen, at that time a hardly populated peasantry , was an occurrence of Ruhr sandstone that was quarried here. One of the advantages of the location in Dahlhausen was the Ruhr Valley Railway , which was under construction . The company developed into the world's leading company in the construction of coke ovens , since in the early 180s it introduced the extraction of the carbon materials ( tar , ammonia , benzene and gas) that result from coking. The first attempts at the Wattenscheider Zeche Holland in 1881 were unsuccessful due to inefficiency. With an improved design, the first system went into operation in 1883 on the Thies shaft of the Pluto colliery in Wanne-Eickel. The mining companies themselves initially did not attach any importance to this line of business, which is why the company Dr. C. Otto & Comp. built these plants at their own expense and operated them for ten years or more on their own account with little involvement of the mines. The onset of the boom in coal chemistry led to strong expansion, even if the mines gradually took the coking plant subsidiary operations into their own hands in view of the profits and Dr. C. Otto & Comp. "Only" took over the plant construction. However, until the German Reich blocked the sea in World War I, the company built more coke ovens without by-product extraction than with these. From 1872 to 1951, the company built more than 48,000 coke ovens worldwide. Today the company mainly builds ovens for aluminum smelters, for waste incineration plants and for plants in the petrochemical industry.

Cooperations, subsidiaries

In the 1980s there were closings (in Bendorf ) and takeovers. There was a joint company with Still since the 1980s: Still Otto GmbH was a specialist in coking plant equipment, with its headquarters in Bochum-Ehrenfeld . At the beginning of the 2000s, Still Otto was absorbed by the Dortmund plant engineering company ThyssenKrupp Uhde GmbH , which had already swallowed Still Otto's competitor in the coking plant sector, the Essen-based Koppers GmbH , as part of the reorganization of plant engineering activities . These companies are now subsidiaries of ThyssenKrupp .

In Bochum and Breitscheid, the company is still active today with refractory products as a member of the Preiss-Daimler group.

In March 2014 the company was included in the Route of Industrial Culture , themed route Bochum .

literature

  • Horst Brückner: Handbook of the gas industry. Volume 1, Gas Generating Furnaces. Verlag R. Oldenbourg, Munich / Berlin 1938. ( online )
  • Bochum. Production and economic space. Girardet Graphic Works and Publishing, Essen 1952.
  • Manfred Rasch: Dr. Carlos Otto - innovator and entrepreneur in coking technology. Der Anschnitt 49 (5/6), 1997: 180-189.

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 25 ′ 54 ″  N , 7 ° 7 ′ 53 ″  E