M. Kappus

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M. Kappus GmbH & Co. KG

logo
legal form GmbH & Co. KG in bankruptcy
founding 1848
Seat Offenbach am Main
management Wolfgang Kappus
Patricia Kappus-Becker
Branch Soap making
Website www.kappus.com

Former factory building of the Kappus company

The M. Kappus GmbH & Co. KG fine soap and perfumery factory in Offenbach am Main was once the largest soap manufacturer in Western Europe. The family business was founded in 1848 and supplies its products worldwide under the brand name Kappus .

Company history

In 1848 the perfume manufacturer Johann Martin Kappus founded the company “M. Kappus Feinseifen und Perfume Factory ”. When the company founder died in 1905, production was already taking place with 100 employees and the products were exported all over the world. Well-known soap product at that time was the "Kappus competing soap".

Cappus olive soap

In the 20th century, production techniques were continuously improved, new soap boiling processes and modern assembly line technology were introduced. With improved products, Kappus secured a leading position in the industry and was able to survive inflation , economic crises and the two world wars. During the Second World War, production was largely destroyed by Allied air raids, and after the war the existing production facilities were dismantled for reparation purposes.

In the post-war years, the production of non-industry products such as baking powder and abrasives began. Later they concentrated again on soap production and began to supply international markets again. Kappus soap went from being a simple personal care product to a gift and luxury item. A skin-friendly transparent soap became particularly well known. In this way, the company has secured a leading position in the industry worldwide to this day.

From mid-2017 until the closure in 2019, the Offenbach company headquarters was located in the Bieber-Waldhof district. The former Kappus factory site in Offenbach's city center was previously part of the Route der Industriekultur Rhein-Main project .

In September 2018, the company filed for bankruptcy . In March 2019, the creditors decided to shut down the Offenbach site. The three other locations of the Kappus Group in Krefeld, Riesa and Heitersheim were initially continued by the insolvency administrator Franz-Ludwig Danko. No buyer was found for the Krefeld location (formerly Dreiring-Werk ), so operations there will be discontinued by the end of September 2020 at the latest. The plants in Riesa and Heitersheim are taken over by Ad Astra Beteiligungs GmbH in Munich and operations are continued.

The reasons for the bankruptcy were the recently too low profit margins on the company's products and the trend towards liquid soap, which Kappus only joined in late. The move to Offenbach-Bieber in 2017 was also much more expensive than originally expected, as the existing buildings there were taken over and had to be extensively converted.

Kappus group

After German reunification in 1990, Kappus took over the largest soap factory in the former GDR in Riesa in Saxony , now known as Kappus Riesa GmbH. The soap factory in the Gröba district was built in 1910 as the first large production facility of the Großeinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Consumvereine (GEG) . It was the symbol for in-house production of the consumer cooperatives and intended as a defense against monopoly claims of the brand industry. It supplied the socialist consumer cooperatives , the red consumer cooperatives of the Hamburg direction in the German Reich with detergents and soap under the trademark GEG.

In Riesa, the group primarily produces liquid soaps, body lotions, gels and shower products. In 1998 a special swimming soap was patented. In 2005, Kappus took over the Dreiring-Werk company in Krefeld . This made Kappus the largest soap manufacturer in Western Europe. With around 350 employees at the three production sites in Offenbach, Riesa and Krefeld, around 35 thousand tons of soap were produced each year, which corresponds to 350 million bars of soap. Today the company is in the hands of the fifth generation of the Kappus family.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Achim Lederle: Offenbach traditional company Kappus has new headquarters in the industrial area. In: op-online.de. July 8, 2017, accessed September 25, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Local route guide No. 9 of the Route der Industriekultur Rhein-Main. (PDF; 519 kB) In: krfrm.de. KulturRegion FrankfurtRheinMain gGmbH, December 2005, accessed on March 18, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Antje Steglich: Difficult times for the Riesa soap factory. In: sz-online.de . September 24, 2018. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
  4. ↑ Marc Kuhn: Offenbach traditional company Kappus wants to reorganize an insolvent company. In: op-online.de. September 26, 2018, accessed September 26, 2018 .
  5. ↑ https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/mittelstand/kappus-wie-der-groesste-steller-von-festseifen-in-die-insolvenz-gerutscht-ist/24134682.html?ticket=ST-82856346-cyYeFwkQC2v59HXQewCG -ap5
  6. ↑ Dreiring-Werke: Soap production in the port ends in September
  7. ^ Insolvent soap manufacturer Kappus Group saved
  8. ↑ How the largest manufacturer of solid soaps slipped into bankruptcy
  9. ^ Wilhelm Fischer : 60 years against 60 years of service to the consumer. 1894-1954. Festschrift, Hamburg 1954, p. 199.
  10. ↑ August Müller : The soap factory of the Grosseinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Consumvereine in Gröba-Riesa , publisher: Grosseinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Consumvereine with limited liability, Hamburg 1910.

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 9.7 "  N , 8 ° 45 ′ 24.4"  E