Zschimmer & Schwarz
| Zschimmer & Schwarz GmbH & Co KG | |
|---|---|
| legal form | GmbH & Co. KG |
| founding | 1894 |
| Seat | Lahnstein , Germany |
| Number of employees | 1,447 (2018) |
| sales | EUR 603.8 million (2018) |
| Branch | Specialty chemicals manufacturer |
| Website | www.zschimmer-schwarz.com |
The Zschimmer & Schwarz GmbH & Co KG is a manufacturer of specialty chemicals with headquarters in Lahnstein on the Rhine. Founded in Chemnitz in 1894 by Otto Zschimmer and Max Schwarz as a chemical wholesaler, the family company is now active with group companies and agencies in 77 countries and employs around 1,350 people worldwide. Six business areas supply chemical auxiliaries for the ceramic, chemical fiber, leather and fur industries as well as for the textile, cosmetics and cleaning agent industries.
The divisions
Zschimmer & Schwarz is active in six business areas: Care Specialties, Leather Auxiliaries, Ceramic Auxiliaries, Textile Auxiliaries, Phosphonates and Fiber Auxiliaries.
One of the oldest business areas is leather auxiliaries , which have been produced since 1909. Natural, synthetic and special fatliquors are manufactured for wet finishing or crust production, which are responsible for leather properties such as softness, fullness and structure. In addition to the automotive leather and shoe upper industry, the company supplies tanneries that produce leather for the clothing, bags, furniture and fur industries.
Care Specialties emerged from the Surfactants division in 2008 and produces specialty surfactants according to customer requirements. Customers are the cosmetics industry and suppliers of technical products for household, industrial and institutional cleaning. The range is supplemented by special products such as amino acid esters and base masses for soap-free, solid washing bars, which are also used in dermatological applications.
In the ceramic auxiliaries division , Zschimmer & Schwarz manufactures around 600 products for the ceramic and powder metallurgy industries. The products are used in all production steps in the ceramic industry. A few years ago, powder metallurgy and the development of colors for digital printing in the tile industry were added as a new segment.
Along with leather, textile auxiliaries are one of the company's oldest business areas. In addition to classic textile finishing such as pretreatment, dyeing and finishing, Zschimmer & Schwarz products can be found in digital textile printing, in technical textiles and functionalizations as well as in ecological systems. According to the company, one focus is the post-treatment of polyamide.
The Phosphonates division , based in Mohsdorf, produces customer-specific phosphonates for the detergent and cleaning agent industry as well as for industrial water treatment. Up to 60% of production goes to the detergent and cleaning agent industry.
With around 200 fiber auxiliaries, the fiber auxiliaries business unit supplies the man-made fiber and nonwovens industry, where the products are used in the manufacture and processing of yarns. The portfolio includes fiber auxiliaries, finishing agents and components that are used in baby diapers, incontinence products, building ground stabilization, protective films, tire cord and needle felts for automobiles, geo and agricultural textiles, carpets and textile filament yarns for the clothing and home textile sectors.
history
Company foundation and first years
On January 1, 1894, the general partnership Zschimmer & Schwarz was entered in the commercial register of Chemnitz. Founded by 30-year-old Otto Zschimmer and 27-year-old Max Schwarz, the company initially traded in drugs, overseas dyes such as indigo , cochineal , turmeric , catechu , colored woods as well as colored wood extracts and chemicals. In 1905 the tanning trade was added. In order to remain competitive, the first major company expansion took place in 1909. Previously only active in the trading business, the manufacture of textile, leather and paper auxiliaries was added with the purchase of a former wool printing plant in Greiz-Dölau . By the 25th anniversary in 1934, the mixed operation with 10 employees had developed into a chemical factory with industrial production facilities and its own research. By 1945 the site had grown to become the company's largest production facility with around 500 employees.
Initially, hydrogen peroxide was produced for wool and silk bleaching and, as a by-product, blanc-fixe - a filler for paints and varnishes. However, the aim was to manufacture all the products required in the paper, textile and leather industries. Both the product portfolio and the company buildings in Greiz-Dölau were expanded in the first few years. In July 1910 it was announced in the Greiz Official Journal that “formic acid, formic acid salts, clay and alumina preparations as well as oil paints are to be produced in the new building.” In 1913 the company leased a sulfuric acid plant in Grünberg near Graslitz in Bohemia , which was operated a few years later was bought. In 1913, four years after starting its own production, the Greiz-Dölau chemical factory had sales of 800,000 marks.
Development in the 1920s and 1930s
1920 saw the first generation change at the top of the company. Otto Zschimmer left the company at the age of 57 and his sons Fritz Zschimmer and Erich Zschimmer followed him. Max Schwarz also brought his sons into the company. Rudolf Schwarz took over the management in Greiz-Dölau in 1921 and Werner Schwarz followed in 1925 as a customer advisor.
The company survived the years of the First World War unscathed and with full employment. From 66 employees in 1914, the company increased to 161 in 1918. After the end of the war, the company expanded again. As a result, the Greiz-Dölau location gradually developed into the "heart of the company". In 1927, a sulfuric acid factory in Heinrichshall, Thuringia, was taken over after residents prevented a new building at the Greiz-Dölau site. The first residential buildings for the company's workers and employees were also built in Dölau in the 1920s.
In-house research and development also began in Greiz-Dölau in the 1920s. The first patent was applied for in 1925. Numerous other patents followed in the 1930s and 1940s. Among other things, for water softeners, new processes for the production of glossy paper, powder detergents, new soaps with turpentine , new processes for dyeing leather and for the production of synthetic fibers . In addition to quality control for all products, there were now the first test tracks for practical tests.
“The decade between the global economic crisis (1929) and the outbreak of the Second World War was one of the strongest periods of growth for the company,” says the Greiz home calendar from 2006. And further: “In 1931 the great success was achieved. With the inclusion of fatty alcohols as a raw material base and the development of a fatty alcohol sulfonate with the product name CFD 31, the decisive breakthrough in the manufacture of modern textile and leather auxiliaries was achieved organic chemistry, which still defines the Zschimmer & Schwarz product range today.
Pre-war years and World War II
When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the increasing surveillance of the economy began. In the chemical industry, among other things, the prices for all chemicals were set and household soaps were only allowed to contain 50 to 52% fat due to the “ fat gap ”.
The Greiz-Dölau chemical factory continued to develop successfully, despite the regulation of industry and business, as well as a shortage of foreign currency and raw materials. Between 1934 and 1944 sales increased from 5.5 to 12.6 million Reichsmarks; The production of some textile and paper auxiliaries also increased. According to the company's history, there is no evidence of the production of war and armaments materials, but of Wehrmacht orders, for example over 500,000 pieces of standard fine soap, 300,000 pieces of shaving soap and 5,000 kilograms of mineral soap in 1944.
The Greiz-Dölau location was further expanded during the National Socialist rule. In 1936/37 a main laboratory was added, which was subdivided into the specialist laboratories textile, leather, oleochemicals, analytics and clay. During the same period, the alumina factory was modernized and expanded. From 1938 onwards, a “followers house” was built for the employees with a dining room, large kitchen, library, beer cellar and common rooms. With the “retirement pension” introduced in 1941, the company paid its employees retirement, disability and survivors' pensions for the first time. In doing so, Zschimmer & Schwarz continued a tradition that began in 1922 with the construction of workers' apartments and that did not go unnoticed by the National Socialists. In 1941, the Greiz-Dölau chemical factory was awarded the National Socialist model company for exemplary social facilities and management.
By doubling the production figures in Greiz-Dölau between 1926 and 1943, the company faced the problem that the raw material contingents allocated by the Reich Ministry of Economics were no longer sufficient to maintain production at the desired level. The purchase of the Flesch works in Oberlahnstein offered a way out . The chemical and tanning factory matched the product range and supplied the missing raw material contingents. For 440,000 Reichsmarks , Zschimmer & Schwarz acquired all the shares in Flesch-Werke AG, a subsidiary of the dye and tanning works Carl Flesch jr. oHG based in Frankfurt am Main .
It is controversial whether the Flesch-Werke AG was Aryanized in 1937 by the chairman of the Dresdner Bank supervisory board , Carl Goetz, and the Thuringian NDSDAP district economic consultant Otto Eberhardt . The liquidation of "Jewish" companies has increased massively since 1937 and was increasingly used by "Aryan" companies - especially in industries with a scarcity of raw materials - to get their raw material contingents. In the case of Flesch-Werke, however, the company's shares were pledged as security for loans long before the National Socialists came to power in 1926. Since the loans could not be repaid, the main lender decided in 1937 - the Dutch bank Hollandsche Bank Unie NV. and the London banking house J. Henry Schröder & Co - to initiate bankruptcy proceedings and auction the shares. The shares finally came into the possession of Zschimmer & Schwarz through several intermediate buyers.
After the war, two former shareholders of Flesch-Werke filed a lawsuit demanding that the company be returned. In 1952 the Koblenz Regional Court dismissed the suit. The judgment was upheld by the French Supreme Court for Restitution Matters in the last instance. Critics of the decision at that time point out that Herbert Flesch was unable to enforce his claims, as almost all those involved in the Aryanization - with the exception of Otto Eberhardt, who died in 1939 - would have cooperated during the proceedings. However, as representatives of the shareholders, Katrin and Christian Schwarz point out that as early as 1947 the Jewish lawyer Hans Jeidels, who had to leave Germany in 1938, had confirmed in a letter to Zschimmer & Schwarz that the transfer of the company was purely economic in nature and that it had already been in the spring of 1932 It was beyond doubt that "Messrs. Flesch could not hold the shares or the company"
Expropriation and new company headquarters in Oberlahnstein
While the head office in Chemnitz was completely destroyed and the Heinrichshall production facility and the sulfuric acid plant in Grünberg were severely damaged, the production facilities in Greiz-Dölau and Oberlahnstein survived the war relatively unscathed. Regular production was soon possible again at both locations after the end of the war. In Oberlahnstein, washing powder was the main business in 1946 and 1947, a branch of production that was abandoned after the currency reform in 1948 due to the exploding competition.
A new development emerged in Greiz-Dölau on October 30, 1945 when the Soviet military administration confiscated the factory and all its assets. After unsuccessful attempts to reverse the subsequent partial expropriation, the company received the certificate of expropriation for full expropriation in May 1948. After the expropriation of all Zschimmer & Schwarz companies in Thuringia and Saxony , the headquarters of the headquarters in Chemnitz and the Greiz-Dölau and Heinrichshall branches were relocated to Brilon in North Rhine-Westphalia in order to secure the patents and trademarks .
Until 1945 the plant in Oberlahnstein worked closely with the production facility in Greiz-Dölau, where the main laboratory, technical management and the patent department were located. After the expropriation, the now missing departments in Lahnstein were rebuilt. Despite the additional workload, the company continued to develop well in the 1950s: within the decade, sales doubled from eight million DM in 1951 to 19 million DM in 1959. The leather, textile and paper auxiliaries business units and laundry raw materials were responsible and the trading business. The export share was 20%, the number of employees was 394.
In addition to numerous innovations that were brought onto the market, the company invested in the Lahnstein location. In the 1950s, new laboratories and new production facilities were built. The company premises were expanded by purchasing around 12,000 square meters. In 1957 a new administration building was moved into. In 1959, the company closed its branch in Brilon, and Oberlahnstein became the headquarters of Zschimmer & Schwarz.
Expansion from 1960 to 1989
After the death of the company's founder, Max Schwarz, in 1960, the third generation gradually joined the company. Six years after the company's founder died, the city of Lahnstein renamed the “Alte Braubacher Straße”, where the company's headquarters were located, to “Max-Schwarz-Straße”.
As in the 1950s, sales doubled in the 1960s: from 19 million DM to 40 million in 1969. The number of employees rose from 400 to 470. As the domestic leather industry increasingly collapsed, sales in the leather auxiliaries division fell massively. so that the management looked around for further sales areas. In 1960, with the establishment of the ceramic auxiliaries division, the company entered a new field of business.
The company had great success in the 1960s with paste ZU, a washing raw material that was included in Badedas, one of the most successful foam baths of those years. Laundry raw materials were the strongest sales group in 1961 and accounted for 55% of total sales. The drying plant for washing raw materials in Lahnstein had to be expanded several times in the 1960s. In 1966, investments were made in a modern spray tower in order to be able to produce spray-dried fatty alcohol sulfates in powder form . Numerous investments were also made in expanding the factory buildings. In 1963, the last temporary solution of the post-war period at the Lahnstein location gave way and the Max-Schwarz-Haus with canteen and social rooms was moved into.
In 1970 Ursa Chemie GmbH was founded. The original aim was to start the production of pharmaceutical chemicals. Today the company produces, among other things, as a contract manufacturer for the chemical and cosmetic industries.
While the 1960s at Zschimmer & Schwarz were marked by the switch from manual to industrial production, the 1970s were influenced by the oil crisis and the chemical accident in Seveso / Italy (1976) , in which highly toxic dioxin was released into the environment. As a result, in October 1977 the first “open day” took place in Oberlahnstein.
The first test system for wastewater treatment was installed in the Lahnstein chemical plant as early as 1975. In 1980 the fully biological sewage treatment plant went into operation, which had been preceded by the construction of a new separate sewer system on the company premises. At four million DM, it was the company's largest single investment to date. Their performance is designed for a city with around 23,000 inhabitants.
The 1980s were also characterized by increasing environmental problems and growing environmental awareness. In 1982, chlorinated hydrocarbons were found in the Lahnstein groundwater . An investigation showed that the wells and groundwater levels on the Zschimmer & Schwarz factory premises also had increased concentrations of tri- and perchlorethylene and methylene chloride . In 1983 the company and the city of Lahnstein agreed that Zschimmer & Schwarz would contribute 900,000 DM to an activated carbon filter for the city's drinking water treatment. In the same year, those responsible decided to stop handling and trading in chlorinated hydrocarbons .
In 1986, another serious chemical accident occurred within a decade at the Sandoz chemical company in Basel . As a result, politicians once again tightened the environmental requirements, particularly with regard to the requirements for the storage of chemicals and the retention of extinguishing water. In order to meet these increasing requirements for groundwater protection , Zschimmer & Schwarz changed its materials management in the following years, which led to the construction of a new logistics center with an integrated, fully automatic high-bay warehouse that went into operation in 1994.
At the end of the 1970s, surfactants , which had previously been classified as laundry raw materials, were the company's largest sales driver with 19%, followed by textile auxiliaries, which were now divided into two separate business areas: fiber auxiliaries for the chemical fiber industry and classic textile auxiliaries . The ceramics division, founded in 1960, recorded the strongest growth in 1979 with 27%.
Another change occurred in 1984 with the sale of the paper auxiliaries division to the chemical company Giulini in Ludwigshafen . The reason was the changed market with increasingly larger paper mills and increasing price pressure that Zschimmer & Schwarz could not withstand.
As in the previous decades, the 1980s were marked by numerous investments. In 1983 the company launched an extensive investment program: Investments were made in the modernization and construction of new production facilities, in the improvement of the infrastructure and warehouse management as well as in the internal organization. In 1987 the company had its own test tannery, in 1988 the new ceramic technical center was built and in 1989 the new SM plant (sulphonation and mixing) was completed.
In 1989 the turnover was 153 million DM, the export share was 50%. As early as 1985, the employee newspaper “Z&S Umschau”, which has been published since 1974, drew a positive balance sheet for the year: “In 1985, Z&S delivered goods totaling 58,600 tons to well over 2000 customers worldwide and issued invoices for DM 121.6 million”.
Return to Thuringia and a new corporate structure
After the fall of the Wall in 1989, the company faced the decision to integrate the former factories in Thuringia into the group of companies. However, the management decided against it as early as 1990. Nevertheless, they wanted to gain a foothold again in eastern Germany and in 1993 acquired the former production site of VEB Fettchemie Chemnitz in Mohsdorf near Chemnitz . Zschimmer & Schwarz Mohsdorf GmbH started the production of leather auxiliaries and phosphonates with 49 employees , which had not previously been produced in the company. In 1995 the textile auxiliaries division moved to Mohsdorf. Today Zschimmer & Schwarz Mohsdorf GmbH & Co. GmbH employs around 150 people there.
The company also continued to invest in Lahnstein. In 1994 and 1995 DM 60 million for the completion of the KS plant, a new logistics center with high-bay warehouse and the expanded sewage treatment plant.
In May 1996 the shareholders adopted a new corporate structure. The Mohsdorf branch was converted into an independent company. Zschimmer & Schwarz thus consisted of three companies in which the then 16 shareholders were equally involved: Z&S GmbH & Co KG Chemische Fabriken, Lahnstein (Z&S Lahnstein), Z&S Mohsdorf with the phosphonates and textile auxiliaries divisions and Z&S Chemie GmbH (Z&S Chemie ) as a holding company for the subsidiaries and associated companies and the chemicals trade in Lahnstein.
The 21st century
In the course of the financial crisis, Zschimmer & Schwarz also suffered a drop in sales. Nevertheless, since the turn of the millennium, the company has been able to double sales from 230 in 2001 to 465 million euros in 2013 thanks to acquisitions and the expansion of production capacities.
In 2008, the leather business was significantly expanded with the takeover of the Heilbronn chemical company Münzing , which had been producing fatliquoring and wetting agents, water repellants and retanning agents for 80 years. In 2012, a new product group was added in the ceramics division that enables tiles to be printed digitally. In 2013, Lefatex Chemie GmbH, a supplier of products for coating textile and carbon fibers, was taken over.
With the departure of Volker Schwarz from the company, no member of the founding families has been on the management board since 2008. In 2017 the management of Z&S Lahnstein included: Martin Haberl, who took over the sales / marketing department of Z&S Lahnstein with a PhD in chemistry in 2004, Dietmar Clausen, who has been in charge of finance and accounting since 2007 and Wolfgang Nowak, who has been in charge of the responsible for the technical area.
International business since 1948
Zschimmer & Schwarz is a global company. In 2015 there were 28 group companies on four continents ( Europe , America , Asia and Africa ), 19 of which have their own production facilities. There are also 149 agencies in 77 countries. More than two thirds of sales are generated abroad.
The first products were exported abroad in 1948, and in 1950 the first export department was established at Z&S Lahnstein. In 1959, the export share of sales had already risen to 20%. This made international business an important source of revenue within a few years.
In April 1960, Zschimmer & Schwarz founded the first foreign subsidiary: Z&S France SARL, based in Paris . After a failed attempt in 1970, the company also gained a foothold in Italy from January 1972 . To this end, the Italian chemical company Montanoir Italiana was gradually taken over. In 1985 the Italian subsidiary Zeta Esse Ti for textile and fiber auxiliaries followed and in 1990 the takeover of the Italian ceramic auxiliaries manufacturer Ceramco. This makes Zschimmer & Schwarz one of the leading manufacturers of auxiliaries for the tile industry in Italy and one of the market leaders for surfactants. In 2014, Zschimmer & Schwarz employed more than 170 people in Italy and, at around 124 million euros, generated the group's second-highest turnover after Germany.
In 1982 the company entered the Asian market - initially with a trade office in Hong Kong , from which business in Pakistan , Taiwan and Korea , among others , was carried out, followed by offices in Shanghai and Beijing in the 1990s . Overall, the export share for the entire company increased to 47% at the end of the 1980s. The leather / fur division was well ahead with 87%, while surfactants had the lowest share of exports with 30%.
In 1990 all subsidiaries and joint ventures were brought together under the umbrella of Z&S Chemie, which achieved sales of 77 million D-Marks. The focus now shifted from Europe to global expansion; the company's divisions and companies have an international focus. Just four years later, in 1994, exports had overtaken sales in Germany with a share of 60%. By the end of the 1990s, it rose to 80%, among other things through the purchase of a production plant for textile auxiliaries, with which Zschimmer & Schwarz managed to expand into the United States in 1998, based in Milledgeville / Georgia.
The years from 2000 onwards were also shaped by the expansion of foreign business: In 2000, a new production location for leather, ceramic and text auxiliaries was added in Brazil . In 2006, Russia followed with a new production site and Mexico with a new trading company, which also started production shortly afterwards. In 2007, Z&S Chemical, founded two years earlier in southern China, in Foshan , was expanded to include its own production of ceramic auxiliaries in order to serve the growing Chinese ceramic market. In 2007 the first branch in Africa was added. The company produces ceramic auxiliaries in Cairo . In 2010, Zschimmer & Schwarz started up its own production facility in Argentina, where leather auxiliaries have been sold since 1978, which, as well as auxiliaries for the textile and fiber industry, are now produced in-house on site.
There were also acquisitions of foreign companies such as Euro Kimya in Turkey in 2010 , in order to be able to participate more in one of the five largest tile markets in the world. In the USA, the trading company USA Fiber Solutions was acquired in 2009, with which it was possible to take over the development of fiber auxiliaries for carpets. In 2014, 58 employees in the USA produced specialties for textiles, fibers, phosphonates, ceramics and care specialties.
Web links
- Zschimmer & Schwarz website
- Page no longer available , search in web archives: Abandoned places Chemnitz
- Page from Zeta Esse Ti Srl Subsidiary of Zschimmer & Schwarz
Individual evidence
- ^ " Custom-made chemistry", Zschimmer & Schwarz company report. no year
- ↑ Information on the history from: 120 Years of Zschimmer & Schwarz, o. O. 2015.
- ↑ 120 years of Zschimmer & Schwarz, o. O. 2015, p. 29.
- ↑ Günther Schmutzler “The end of soap and soap boiling in Dölau”, in: Greizer Heimatkalender, 2006.
- ↑ 120 years of Zschimmer & Schwarz. o. O. 2015, p. 52.
- ^ Bridegroom, Petra: Medium-sized companies in National Socialism, Munich 1997, p. 299f.
- ↑ Aryanized or acquired . In: Rhein-Zeitung . November 28, 2015, accessed March 7, 2016 .
- ↑ Shareholders reject allegations . In: Rhein-Zeitung . November 28, 2015, accessed March 7, 2016 .
- ↑ ursa-chemie.de
- ^ Z&S Umschau, June 1986.
- ↑ Brochure for the 25th anniversary and information for residents , p. 6