Printing ink factories Gebrüder Schmidt
| Printing ink factories Gebrüder Schmidt | |
|---|---|
| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | 1878 |
| resolution | April 5, 2002 (merger) |
| Seat | Frankfurt am Main |
| Number of employees | 1,000 (2001) |
| sales | 250 million euros (2001) |
| Branch | Printing inks |
The printing ink factories Gebrüder Schmidt GmbH (abbreviated GS ) were founded in 1878 in Bockenheim , Solmsstrasse 31 near Frankfurt am Main . The company was a major German manufacturer of printing inks and produced letterpress , offset and gravure inks . Later inks for screen printing and flexographic printing were added to the production program.
history
The company was founded in 1878 by the brothers Ernst and Rudolf Schmidt, who first produced black inks. In 1889 a branch was set up in Berlin that produced colors for newspaper presses , and later also colored colors. In 1907 a factory in Berlin-Heinersdorf was taken over, and ink for the gravure printing process has been produced since 1910. In 1928 the company headquarters were relocated to Berlin, and in 1930 Schmidt produced at ten locations in Europe. Before the Second World War , foreign agencies and plants were established in Holland , Sweden , Hungary , Austria , Switzerland and Poland .
The new beginning after 1945 took place in the printing ink factory A. Haller GmbH in Frankfurt-Rödelheim , which was taken over in 1943 and which had survived the war largely unscathed. In 1946 the company CA Lindgens in Rodenkirchen , a raw material manufacturer, was taken over. In 1947 the company Farbenschmidt GmbH was founded in Flomborn , which was closed in 1975. In 1967 the printing ink factory Dr. Gustav Wicke in West Berlin was added, which later traded as Druckfarbenfabrik Berlin KG, Gebr. Schmidt GmbH and was liquidated in 2003. In 1958 a plant in Montreal / Canada was taken over.
In 1978, to mark the 100th anniversary of the company, the 100-year -old Gebrüder Schmidt Foundation was established, which awards the media award for media designers every two years. On April 5, 2002 the company, which in 2001 had sales of approximately 250 million euros and approximately 1,000 employees, merged with the US company Flint Ink Corporation from Michigan. In 2006 the name was transferred to Flint.
In July 2005, one of the world's ten largest private equity finance firms, financial investor CVC Capital Partners , acquired the joint venture. In this way, together with the recently acquired printing inks division of BASF and the paint manufacturer ANI Printing, CVC formed a group called the Flint Group with annual sales of 2.1 billion euros. The bank loans taken out to finance the multiple merger were transferred to the merged companies. For debt servicing it became necessary to increase the company's return from the industry standard 1–2% to 10%. This was achieved through extensive restructuring measures, freeing up many jobs and closing large parts of the plant. In 2007, 280 employees were still working in Frankfurt, but remained the center for publication printing inks (illustration gravure inks, heatset and web offset inks).
In April 2014, it was sold to the US conglomerate Koch Industries and the investment division of Goldman Sachs. Koch Industries is one of the largest unlisted companies in the USA with sales of 115 billion dollars. The two owners Charles and David Koch are considered great supporters of the conservative "Tea Party" movement.
literature
- Lothar Fecher: Collected things: from 100 years of company history of the printing ink factories Gebr. Schmidt 1878–1978 , printing ink factory Gebrüder Schmidt, Frankfurt, Main, 1978
- 90 years of printing ink factory Gebrüder Schmidt , in: Druck-Print , Keppler, Heusenstamm, 1969, p. 254
Web links
- Literature by and about printing ink factories Gebrüder Schmidt in the catalog of the German National Library
- Flint group website
- History of the Schmidt Brothers in the Hessian Economic Archives (PDF; 639 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Information on bvdm-online.de ( Memento from December 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Information on presseportal.ch ( page no longer available , search in web archives )
- ↑ Flint Group paint manufacturer from Stuttgart. In: Werzu-wem.de. Retrieved February 23, 2020 .
- ^ Flint-Group Luxemburg, buyer of the Flint-Schmidt group
- ^ Frank Lohmann: Flint Group is sold to Goldman and Koch Industries. In: print.de. Deutscher Drucker , April 11, 2014, accessed on February 23, 2020 (German).