EPC Group is a German

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

and

construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and ...

company. It builds large industrial plants and infrastructure projects around the world. The history of the

family business A family business is a commercial organization in which decision-making is influenced by multiple generations of a family, related by blood or marriage or adoption, who has both the ability to influence the vision of the business and the willin ...

goes back to the 19th century and in the present form, it exists since 1994. The headquarters of the EPC Group are located in Arnstadt,

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and lar ...

. 2014, the EPC Group was named one of the top 100 innovators of the German

Mittelstand commonly refers to a group of stable business enterprises in Germany, Austria and Switzerland that have proved successful in enduring economic change and turbulence. The term is difficult to translate and may cause confusion for non-Germans. It ...

. In November 2017, the German Business Magazine WirtschaftsWoche honored the subsidiary company EPC Engineering & Technologies GmbH (ranked at position 28 among the 50 most innovative small and medium-sized companies in Germany) as the most innovative company in the Eastern part of Germany.

History

The roots of the EPC Group go back to 1873, when August Oskar Henkel registered business to the princedom of

Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was a small historic state in present-day Thuringia, Germany, with its capital at Rudolstadt. History Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was established in 1599 in the course of a resettlement of Schwarzburg dynasty lands. Since ...

. The purpose of the company was agricultural machinery engineering. Until 1933, the Henkel family successfully produced several types of machines. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, the company was discontinued, but the owners kept working as engineers. After the

German reunification German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...

, Peter Henkel founded the ''EPC Engineering Consulting GmbH'' as a

limited liability company A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the United States of America, US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the Flow-through entity, pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole p ...

(

Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung A ''Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung'' (, abbreviated GmbH and also GesmbH in Austria; ) is a type of legal entity common in Germany, Austria, Switzerland (where it is equivalent to a '' société à responsabilité limitée''), and Liech ...

) in 1993. The company began trading in 1994. The company was a spin-off of the Chemiefaserkombinat Schwarza, a former publicly owned operation (

Volkseigener Betrieb The Publicly Owned Enterprise (german: Volkseigener Betrieb; abbreviated VEB) was the main legal form of industrial enterprise in East Germany. They were all publicly owned and were formed after mass nationalisation between 1945 and the early 1960 ...

) in

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

. In the early days of the EPC Group, the company recruited many employees of the Chemiefaserkombinat Schwarza, particularly

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe ...

s and

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

s. Some of them have worked for the engineering business unit of the ''Thüringer Faser AG'', one of the successor companies of the Chemiefaserkombinat Schwarza. The company's activities were crucial for the development of the Chemiefaserkombinat Schwarza to a modern

industrial park An industrial park (also known as industrial estate, trading estate) is an area zoned and planned for the purpose of industrial development. An industrial park can be thought of as a more "heavyweight" version of a business park or office park ...

for industries of all kind. 1995, Peter Henkel founded a second company named ''EPC Technology GmbH''. Today, both the ''EPC Engineering Consulting GmbH'' and the ''EPC Technology GmbH'', as well as other companies, are subsidiaries of the ''EPC Holding GmbH'', doing business as EPC Group. Ten years after its foundation, the EPC Group and all of its subsidiaries had about 150 employees. In the following years, exports continuously increased, especially to the

Arab world The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western A ...

, Asia and Russia. For example, the EPC Group built a plant for plastic granulates in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries by area, fifth-largest country in Asia ...

, which is one of the largest revamp projects in the world. Similar facilities for the production of

Polycarbonate Polycarbonates (PC) are a group of thermoplastic polymers containing carbonate groups in their chemical structures. Polycarbonates used in engineering are strong, tough materials, and some grades are optically transparent. They are easily work ...

have been built in China, with a capacity of more than 100,000 tons per year. These projects were recognized as important for both the company and the whole industry. In 2009, the EPC Group acquired the ''CRYOTEC Anlagenbau GmbH'', a

cryogenic In physics, cryogenics is the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures. The 13th IIR International Congress of Refrigeration (held in Washington DC in 1971) endorsed a universal definition of “cryogenics” and “cr ...

plant construction company in

Wurzen Wurzen () is a town in the Leipzig district, in Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the river Mulde, here crossed by two bridges, 25 km east of Leipzig, by rail N.E. of Leipzig on the main line via Riesa to Dresden. It has a cathedral dating ...

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

, with roots going back to the year 1879. Today, the ''HI Bauprojekt GmbH'' and ''RMN Ingenieure GmbH'' are also part of the EPC Group.

Operations

The EPC Group builds turnkey facilities for

chemicals A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., wit ...

polymers A polymer (; Greek ''poly-'', "many" + '' -mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic an ...

and

fibers Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often incorporate ...

, pharma and

fine chemicals In chemistry, fine chemicals are complex, single, pure chemical substances, produced in limited quantities in multipurpose plants by multistep batch chemical or biotechnological processes. They are described by exacting specifications, used fo ...

, renewable energies, technical gases and

biotechnologies Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used by ...

, as well as infrastructure projects. In addition to the design and construction, the supervision of the commissioning and operation of industrial plants are an important part of the business. Most of the revenues come from projects in foreign countries. The management board of the EPC Group consists of Jens, Ulf, Nadine and Tim Henkel, the second generation of their family to run the company. The headquarters of the ''EPC Holding GmbH'', which is the holding company of the EPC Group, are in Meuselbach-Schwarzmühle, where the machinery factory of August Oskar Henkel was located. The EPC Group and all of its subsidiaries have locations in

Alzenau Alzenau (; until 31 December 2006 officially ''Alzenau i.UFr.'') is a town in the north of the Aschaffenburg district in the ''Regierungsbezirk'' of Lower Franconia (''Unterfranken'') in Bavaria, Germany. Until 1 July 1972, Alzenau was the distri ...

, Arnstadt,

Gera Gera is a city in the German state of Thuringia. With around 93,000 inhabitants, it is the third-largest city in Thuringia after Erfurt and Jena as well as the easternmost city of the ''Thüringer Städtekette'', an almost straight string of cit ...

Jena Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a po ...

Leuna Leuna is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany, south of Merseburg and Halle, on the river Saale. The town is known for the ''Leunawerke'', at 13 km2 one of the biggest chemical industrial complexes in Germany, where a very wide range of ...

Rudolstadt Rudolstadt is a town in the German federal state Thuringia, with the Thuringian Forest to the southwest, and to Jena and Weimar to the north. The former capital of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, the town is built along the River Saale inside a wide ...

and

as well as

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

. Another office in the

n state capital of

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits ...

is being planned. Since year 2000, the EPC Group is a member of the ''Bundesverband mittelständische Wirtschaft e.V.'' (BVMW), a well-known German association for

small and medium-sized enterprises Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Ba ...

. The EPC Group continually supports regional sports teams, for example the football club

FC Einheit Rudolstadt FC Einheit Rudolstadt is a German football club from Rudolstadt in the district of Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, Thuringia. The ground of the club is called ''Städtisches Stadion im Heinepark''. Currently they play their second season in the NOFV-Oberl ...

References

External links

* {{official website, epc.com Companies established in 1993 Companies based in Thuringia Engineering companies of Germany