History of the Connect Chemicals Group
With its mission its name, Connect Chemicals, was founded by Dirk Otmar, Basar Karaca and Qiping Hou, in 1998, with the intention creating added value to customers and suppliers, alike.
In addition to the traditional business of a trading company, Connect Chemicals GmbH further developed to a specialist "full service sourcing” company for its customers, in the field of Specialty Chemicals.
With a strategy to generate growth, a Connect office was established in Tianjin, in January 1999, followed by another office in Wuxi, in January 2000. Both locations coordinate our activities in the Chinese market and ensure compliance with all Quality and Health & Safety requirements, for our customers.
With continuous expansion of our sales and marketing activities, we were quickly able to provide our international customers with a local point of contact, through the respective country offices. Connect Chemicals UK and Connect Italy were established in May 1999 and January 2000, respectively.
Connect Chemical LLC, in Atlanta, Georgia, was established in July 2001 in order to establish a presence in the largest single chemical market in the world.
More Chinese production was established in 2001. Jianyin Connect Chemicals Co. Ltd, the Jingjiang Connect Chemical Co. Ltd and Connect Rugao Chemicals Co. Ltd., became three key partners, in our production portfolio.
In August 2003, we entered into a joint venture in China, establishing Connect Wuxi Meihua. Connect Chemicals France, was opened in October of that year.
To stay abreast of the positive developments in the area of delivering products to the thermal paper industry, Connect Wilson (Penglai) Chemicals, part of another joint venture, was established in August 2004. The same year in November, a liaison office was established in Mumbai, India. This became a Legal Entity at the beginning of 2009 – with Connect Chemicals India Pvt. Ltd. Ltd., being formed.
In January 2008 we achieved our goal of having production in Europe, acquiring the former Agfa plant in Vaihingen/Enz, Baden Württemberg, in Germany, now known as Connect Chemicals & Production Services GmbH. From here, we are offering a number of additional products and services to our customers. With a variety of Reactors and dedicated team of scientists, we can offer a variety of syntheses for toll manufacturing, blending and packing.
This underscores once again our mission and future direction, for the benefit of our customers, to the rapid changing realities of the global market for specialty chemicals.