Koepp foam

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Koepp Schaum GmbH

logo
legal form GmbH
founding April 1, 1861
December 16, 2002 (GmbH)
Seat Lichtenfels, Upper Franconia
management Markus Ziegler
Manfred Hohenhorst
Jonathan M. Cheele
Daniel J. O'Riordan
Number of employees 98 (2011)
sales 19.0 million euros (2011)
Branch Chemical industry
Website http://www.koepp-schaum.de/

The Koepp Schaum GmbH in Lichtenfels in Upper Franconia , is a chemical company which foams produced processed and markets. The original company headquarters in Oestrich , a district of Oestrich-Winkel in the Rheingau , was closed in 2018.

history

Rudolph Koepp
Former location in Oestrich in the Rheingau
Gantry crane over the Koepp tunnel shortly before dismantling in 2009

In 1859, the chemist and company founder Rudolph Koepp , together with Emil Leisler and Eduard Brand in Oestrich at the end of Mühlstrasse on what was later to be known as the monastery grounds, acquired a factory building with a machine house and apartment. In 1861 the shares of Leisler and Brands were transferred to Koepp. Production began on April 1st with the production of earth colors and cement . In 1862 the company was converted into a limited partnership , which was entered in the commercial register on June 1 under the name Rudolph Koepp & Co. Fabrication of Chemicals . During this time, the production of oxalic acid began , the quality of which was recognized at international exhibitions in 1863 and 1865. For reasons of space, another company headquarters was built in Oestrich directly on the Rhine in 1872, and from 1882 the company tried to sell the company building at the end of Mühlstrasse. The Oestrich chaplain Clemens Langenhoff acquired this in order to build a nursing home for the elderly and the sick under the direction of the Dernbacher sisters . After the old company building was demolished, the St. Clement House, popularly known as the little monastery , was opened there on December 10, 1883 . In the following years Koepp developed into the most important oxalic acid manufacturer in Europe. From 1899, the company contractually shared the world market for oxalic acid with the Elektrochemische Werke Bitterfeld , after a sharp drop in prices had forced all other competitors to give up production. In 1907, oxalic acid was produced for the first time on an industrial scale using a new Koepp process, and in 1908 production was expanded to include formic acid . In the years to come, a large gantry crane from the crane manufacturer Zurstrassen from Ettlingen was built on the banks of the Rhine to load the manufactured products onto the Rhine .

During the First World War , the production and sales of oxalic and formic acid fell sharply because they were not products of importance to the war effort. Only after the sales slump of 1923 did the company slowly recover.

The limited partnership was converted into a stock corporation in 1931, and the company now operates under the name Rudolph Koepp & Co. Chemische Fabrik AG . In 1938 a fiber material factory was acquired in Mannheim , where coconut fibers were refined into elancrin , a substitute for expensive horsehair .

In World War II , production was maintained, new products such as derived from wood Erka fiber or on oxalate produced water softening with wash effect led during the war considerable success. Shortly before the end of the war, the Oestrich plant was damaged and the Mannheim plant almost completely destroyed. From March 30 to July 28, 1945 American troops occupied the company building in Oestrich. As early as 1946, an initially modest production could be resumed there.

From 1954 the production of polyurethane foams began . For the new construction of the federal highway 42 , which was to cut through the Koepp site directly along the Rhine, the so-called Koepp tunnel (also Oestricher tunnel ) was built under the crane in 1959, which was supposed to protect road traffic from any falling cargo. The tunnel and crane have shaped the Oestrich townscape for decades .

1971 from the AG Rudolph Koepp the Koepp AG .

When the Veenendaal foam factory from Lichtenfels took over the majority of the shares in 1979, chemical production was discontinued. In 1985 the British Vita Group became the main shareholder of both Koepp and Veenendaal.

In the 1980s, a large part of the Oestrich company premises was converted into an industrial park and the company's own vineyard Oestricher Burggarten was built with residential houses. The containing production residues such as arsenic , lead and creosote heavily loaded Klösterchengelände was founded in 1993 by the Darmstadt Regional Council for legacy explained and was henceforth regarded as the oldest industrial contaminated site in the Rhine-Main area. The loading facility on the Rhine and the crane went out of operation in 1997.

On June 30, 2000, Koepp AG announced its withdrawal from the stock exchange on July 12, 1999 . At the Annual General Meeting on November 18, 2002, it was decided to change the legal form of the stock corporation to a limited liability company and the company was changed to Koepp Schaum GmbH with the articles of association of December 16, 2002 .

The crane, which was ultimately owned by the concrete manufacturer Readymix (now Cemex ), was dismantled in July 2009. In 2010 the monastery grounds were decontaminated from 7,000 m 3 of soil in order to enable building there. In May 2012, the Hessian Road Administration had the partially destroyed glass blocks of the Koepp tunnel removed, as these were no longer considered to be roadworthy.In 2016, the tunnel was completely dismantled .

Chemical accident on August 13, 2012

At noon on August 13, 2012, water got into a tank on the company premises in Oestrich. The resulting chemical reaction increased the temperature and pressure in the tank. As a result, a cloud of toxic toluene diisocyanate (TDI) gas escaped from the tank. Hundreds of residents were considered to be evacuated. A total of 26 people were slightly injured, including firefighters, police officers, company employees and local residents. On the night of August 14th there were two more deflagrations. The damaged tank was cooled by the fire brigade for days. The mission could only be ended after more than four weeks. The exact course of the accident has not yet been clarified. The Darmstadt Regional Council initially withdrew the company's operating license after the accident, after a safety review of the operation and upgrading of the existing measurement, control and regulation technology and the implementation of all required safety measures, the Regional Council approved the restart on February 4, 2013. The preliminary investigation initiated by the Wiesbaden public prosecutor was discontinued in December 2013.

Koepp today

The Koepp product range has been realigned since 1982. There was a move away from the production and processing of foams for the mattress and upholstered furniture industry. Koepp almost exclusively developed and produced foams for technical applications in a wide variety of industries. In addition to the automotive industry, this included the construction industry, filter industry, medical technology and other industrial applications. In particular, the imitation natural sponge with the name "Kitty" and the new development of a very light but at the same time hard ether foam (HiLoTM) should be emphasized.

On January 4, 2018, the owner company announced the closure of the Oestrich site for 2018; production is to be relocated to other plants in the group for strategic and economic reasons.

swell

  • 100 years of Rudolph Koepp & Co. Chemische Fabrik AG Oestrich im Rheingau 1861-1961 . Oestrich 1961, OCLC 37737006 . (Festschrift for the 100th anniversary)
  • Koepp Schaum Official Website

Web links

Commons : Koepp Schaum GmbH  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Homepage of the company. Accessed January 5, 2018.
  2. a b c Lene Wachendorff on the ninetieth anniversary. 1861-1951 Rudolph Koepp & Co. Chemische Fabrik AG. Oestrich in the Rheingau. Oestrich 1951.
  3. Excerpts from the chronicle of the Dernbacher sisters in Oestrich, Hallgarten and Winkel made available by the provincial council of the Dernbacher sisters, 56428 Dernbach (the nursing home existed until 1979 and was demolished in 1999 except for a small chapel).
  4. Dirk Hackenholz: The electrochemical works in Bitterfeld, 1914-1945: a location of the IG-Farbenindustrie AG . LIT Verlag, 2004, p. 70.
  5. a b Koepp Veenendaal. Oestrich-Winkel 1986, OCLC 174307136 . (Festschrift for the company's 125th anniversary, April 1986).
  6. a b RP: Monastery grounds in Oestrich free of contaminated sites. ( Memento from December 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Darmstadt Regional Council, press release, September 2, 2011.
  7. Oliver Kemper: Stock Exchange Withdrawals in Germany: Explanatory Approaches and Price Reactions . Deutscher Universitätsverlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8350-0708-6 , p. 630.
  8. ↑ Extract from the commercial register HRB 19905, accessed on January 3, 2013.
  9. No final all-clear after a gas accident. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine. August 15, 2012.
  10. Public prosecutor's office investigates after chemical accident In: Frankfurter Allgemeine 23 August 2012.
  11. ↑ Operation costs in the millions. In: Wiesbaden Courier. September 14, 2012.
  12. KOEPP company in Oestrich-Winkel is allowed to resume operations ( Memento from October 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Darmstadt regional council, press release, February 5, 2013.
  13. Operating license issued. Press release on the official homepage of the city of Oestrich-Winkel, February 5, 2013
  14. Koepp informs ( memento of October 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) February 5, 2013 Press release: Operating license granted - Koepp resumes foam production.
  15. 60 people lose their jobs. Koepp managing director Ziegler announces plant closure at Rheingau-Echo online, accessed on January 5, 2018


Coordinates: 50 ° 0 '28.4 "  N , 8 ° 2' 8.3"  E