Luhns

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Luhns

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1869
Seat Wuppertal
management Khodayar Alambeigi
Number of employees 320
sales 170 million euros (2009)
Branch cleaning supplies
Website luhns.de

The Luhns GmbH is a German company for the production of detergents , cleansers and detergents with headquarters in Wuppertal District Oberbarmen .

The annual turnover in 2009 was around 170 million euros with 320 employees within the entire Luhns Group. The products can mainly be found in discount supermarkets such as Aldi or Netto . According to the company Luhns is the second largest manufacturer of private label in Germany, the number three in Europe.

The Luhns range includes around 800 personal care products .

Locations

In Greven - Reckenfeld in Germany, all kinds of liquid products such as heavy duty detergents , fabric softeners , toilet cleaners and detergents are manufactured. In the work Bopfingen quality personal care products such were to 2011 shower and bubble baths , shampoos and cream soaps made. After the takeover by the Hansa Group , the production site was relocated to Genthin in the 2nd quarter of 2011 .

The founding location in Wuppertal, where soaps , toothpaste and toilet pens were produced until 2001 , was largely given up in 2001 and only housed the research and development laboratory . Efforts were made to develop concepts for the future use of the 20,000 m² factory site. The administrative seat was moved to Greven ; Purchasing and sales were located in the Triangle high-rise in Cologne - Deutz from 2006 to March 2009 .

Since March 2009, in addition to research and development, the administrative headquarters as well as purchasing, sales and marketing have been back in Wuppertal. Since the end of 2013, the Oberbarmen job center has been located in part of the premises. For a long time it was unclear what would happen to the rest of the building complex. After the move in a Kaufland branch and the planning of a medical center failed, it was announced in June 2017 that the development on the remaining 21,000 m² area would be demolished.

history

Luhns administration building in Wuppertal
Inner courtyard of the Luhns headquarters in Wuppertal

The company was founded on January 8, 1869 by August Luhn, his wife Pauline and Theodor Leyerer in Barmen- Wichlinghausen am Schwarzbach , today a district of Wuppertal, as a factory for soft soap .

The company "Luhns" has been protected by trademark law since 1899. In 1900 the three largest boilers in Germany were operated, they had a capacity of 300,000 kilograms. A separate factory connection was created in 1901 from the Barmen-Wichlinghausen train station (from 1929: Wuppertal-Wichlinghausen ); it allowed twelve freight cars to be loaded at the same time.

Within a few years, the company developed through the first "electrically operated soap factory" to become the largest manufacturer in Germany. In 1914, 260 employees worked in the factory in Barmen-Wichlinghausen and generated sales of eight to ten million marks. The advertising slogan “Luhns is recognized by the red ribbon” was introduced early on and has accompanied generations. Already legally protected in the 1890s, the trademark protection on the slogan expired at the beginning of 1960. Other well-known slogans were “Lunika washes wonderfully” and “Wash with Luhns - because many do it”.

In 1939, 350 people were employed on the approximately 10,000 m² factory premises. Large parts of the factories were destroyed in the air raids on Wuppertal in World War II. After the war, Luhns was the first company in the industry to bring out a soap powder with foam bleach.

In 1969, when the company was 100 years old, sales reached DM 86 million and around 700 employees were employed. A major fire in 1970 caused damage of around DM 1 million. In 1972 the Luhns family left the company, the company was converted into a stock corporation and later became the property of the Belgian company Tensia .

The British Petroleum acquired the company in 1980 and sold it in 1987 at the Zurich Steinfels group . In the same year the Belgian plant in Lembeek was acquired. Two years later, the factory in Bopfingen was acquired and operations in Greven were resumed at the same time.

In 1993, the financial investor Warburg Pincus became the majority shareholder and Pall Mall co-shareholder of Luhns. A year later, Luhns took over the two companies Butler and Trendy . Andreas Heeschen, previously a partner in Pall Mall Capital , became the majority partner in Luhns after Warburg Pincus left . A planned merger with the Düsseldorf-based Henkel group was prohibited by the Federal Cartel Office in 1999 . In December 2008 the sole shareholder and managing director Heeschen sold his shares; since then, Luhns has been part of the Hansa-Chemie group of the Iranian-born Duisburg entrepreneur Khodayar Alambeigi (initially as a subsidiary of Savanna AG , since May 2010 as a subsidiary of the listed Hansa Group ).

After the insolvency of the Hansa Group in mid-2014, Luhns was sold to the Swiss company Gemini Holding AG at the beginning of November 2014, which in turn filed for bankruptcy in May 2015.

In mid-2015 it was announced that Luhns had been bought by the Neunkirchen company Thurn Produkte , also a manufacturer of cleaning products.

Web links

Commons : Luhns  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e website of the company ( memento of August 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), accessed July 2009
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Klaus Koch: Luhns goes back to his roots and returns. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . (online), March 11, 2009.
  3. ↑ Relocation of the LUHNS production site from Bopfingen to Genthin. Luhn's press release, August 31, 2010 (PDF; 95 kB)
  4. ↑ Diploma theses for the Luhns site: Exhibition in the town hall ( Memento from July 6, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Access July 2009 (the content is visible with programs such as cURL )
  5. ↑ Claudia Kasemann: Job Center now in Luhns building . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . December 1, 2013 ( wz.de [accessed October 27, 2016]).
  6. ^ Friedemann Bräuer: The future of the Luhns site remains uncertain . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . July 5, 2016 ( wz.de [accessed October 27, 2016]).
  7. ^ Daniel Neukirchen: Luhns area is about to be revitalized. West German newspaper . June 27, 2017. Retrieved January 9, 2018.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o website of the company 2004 at www.archive.org ( Memento from April 15, 2004 in the Internet Archive ), accessed July 2009
  9. ↑ Bundeskartellamt prohibits the Henkel / Luhn merger. ( Memento of March 31, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Press release of the Federal Cartel Office of September 21, 1999.
  10. ↑ Press release from Hansa International from December 2008 ( Memento from February 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
  11. ↑ Luhns is sold to the Hansa Group. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . (online), May 14, 2010.
  12. ↑ Hansa Group AG: Purchase agreements for assets of HANSA GROUP AG and its subsidiaries concluded. German Society for Ad Hoc Publicity , November 19, 2014, accessed on August 15, 2015 .
  13. ^ Insolvency application procedure Gemini group of companies Duisburg. (No longer available online.) Press portal Switzerland, May 27, 2015, archived from the original on November 30, 2015 ; accessed on October 8, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.presseportal-schweiz.ch
  14. ↑ Oliver Hengst: New owner. Luhns: It continues. Westphalian news . July 2, 2015, accessed January 9, 2018.