Olfry

Olfry Brick Works
legal form	GmbH & Co. KG
founding	1907
Seat	Vechta
Branch	Brick factory
Website	http://www.olfry.de/

Easily recognizable from the Stoppelmarkt Ferris wheel: the Olfry chimney as the dominant structure in the south of Vechta

View of the Olfry site from the south

The Olfry Ziegelwerke GmbH & Co. KG is a company that produces bricks and has its headquarters in the Vechta district of Hagen. The name is composed of the components " Oldenburg " and " von Frydag ". The 72 meter high chimney of the brickworks is the tallest building in Vechta and is easily recognizable from a distance in the flat terrain of the North German lowlands (e.g. from the Ferris wheel of the Vechta Stoppelmarkt ).

Company history

The Grand Ducal Oldenburg Chamberlain and later Chief Chamberlain Paul Friedrich August Freiherr von Frydag acquired a full heir position in Hagen for 150,000 gold marks in 1907, which included a farm with around 90 hectares of land and a brick factory, first mentioned in 1678. For a long time the brickworks formed an organizational unit with Gut Daren , the headquarters of the Frydag family. For 200,000 marks August von Frydag set up the brickworks under the name "Freiherrlich Frydagsche Dampfziegeleiverwaltung" and modernized it. Production began in 1908. In that year, 2 million stones, 200,000 roof tiles and drainage pipes were made.

After August von Frydag's death in 1922, his son Haro von Frydag took over the company, which he renamed “Haro v. Frydagsche Guts- und Dampfziegeleiverwaltung, Daren bei Vechta ”. In 1923, the company owner acquired a peat litter to employ brickworkers in winter.

Haro von Frydag died in 1926. The business was initially taken over by his wife, who later married Friedrich Freiherr von Heimrod, who was the managing director until 1935. At the age of 23, Udo von Frydag took over the company from his mother. In 1953 he named this in "Brickworks Freiherr v. Frydag ”and in 1976 in“ Olfry ”(with a crown on the“ y ”).

After Udo von Frydag's death in 1969, ownership of the brickworks passed to his son Georg Wilhelm, who is the owner of the company to this day.

In 2007 the company had 55 employees, eight of them in the field. The business interest extends to the entire north-west of Germany from the Polish border to the Netherlands and Denmark , the two main export customers. In 2009, the fixed assets of the Olfry company amounted to 7 million euros with a debt ratio of 0 percent.

The von Frydag family runs a brick-making museum at their headquarters in Daren, where anyone interested can understand the history of the Olfry brick-making factory.

Geological foundations

The brickworks in Vechta benefit from a rich layer of clay that extends over the northern foothills of the Dammer Mountains . As early as the beginning of the 19th century, this deposit was used by the church bricks in the north of the neighboring town of Lohne ; The parish church of St. Gertrud was built using clinker bricks from the clay deposits there. The clayey loam soil near Vechta has a high natural iron content, which gives the bricks a bright and strong red tint.

Ecological concerns

From 1907 to 2009, 2 million cubic meters of clay were mined in Hagen. With the purchase of 3.6 hectares of mining area in 2001, the area with a mining permit is currently 8 hectares. This area should be sufficient by 2030. By 2033, a lake district with three lakes is to be built on the current mining area . In 1993, Olfry was the first European brickworks to set up a flue gas cleaning system , supported by the Lower Saxony eco-fund. To supply the brickworks with energy, Olfry also uses landfill gas from the nearby landfill barrel bog.