Foundation of SaarGummi Ibérica in Spain

The establishment of the Indian joint venture “GoldSeal-SaarGummi” followed

The opening of a production facility in São Paulo, Brazil - SaarGummi do Brasil – left a first footprint on the South American continent.

At the turn of the millennium, SaarGummi expanded its Eastern European activities with the establishment of SaarGummi Czech in Nachod, Czech Republic, followed by the acquisition of the Thona Group with plants in the USA and Canada in the same year. With SaarGummi Quebec (Magog, near Montreal), SaarGummi Americas (Ann Arbor/Detroit) and SaarGummi Tennessee (Pulaski), the company now also maintained a presence in the North American region as one of the most important markets for the automotive manufacturing industry.

In 2003, RAG AG in Essen, the new owner of Saarbergwerke AG since 1998, decided to divest itself of all non-coal activities in the Saarland. This had no major impact on SaarGummi initially. On the contrary - the world’s largest strainer of the time was put into operation with the rebuilding of the mixing plant at the Büschfeld site. And a second plant was also opened in Brazil, in São Bernardo do Campo, as well.

In the following year 2004, RAG sold the SaarGummi Group to the financial investor Orlando Management. This led to a renaming from “SaarGummi GmbH” to “SG technologies GmbH”. In addition to which an administration company, the “SaarGummi Verwaltungs- GmbH”, was founded.

SaarGummi continued to expand in 2005. Three additional companies were established: “Duraproof Dichtungssysteme GmbH” in Büschfeld, “SaarGummi technologies S.à r.l.” in Luxembourg, and “SaarGummi Slovakia s.r.o.” in Slovakia.

The joint venture with the Chinese state-owned enterprise CQLT paved the way for expansion on the Chinese market in 2006, the year SaarGummi YuJin (Chongqing) was founded. In the same year, the “sales and development” division was spun off from SG technologies GmbH and operated under the name of “SaarGummi International GmbH” from then on, pooling all the sales and development activities worldwide.

The year of SaarGummi celebrating its 60th anniversary, was marked by its resale to the financial investor Odewald & Compagnie.

2008 saw the establishment of “SaarGummi Deutschland GmbH”, from now on responsible for the automotive production.

The non-automotive business segments were merged in “Duraproof technologies GmbH” a year later.

Even with “Hangzhou Jiaxuan Rolling Automotive Parts Co. Ltd.” founded in China, the SaarGummi Group’s business faced dire straits in 2010: SaarGummi Deutschland GmbH had to file for insolvency on November 5, and further subsidiaries followed.

 

To be continued...