CUSTOMER CENTRICITY IS OUR TRADITION

Our success story started even before the penultimate turn of the century, when Mr Schill and Mr Seilacher tried their skills in fabricating speciality products for the leather industry. Today, the companies they founded more than 140 years ago have a presence on all five continents due to its performance chemicals and speciality chemicals.

In 1877, when in Heilbronn, Germany, Christoph Seilacher and his brother-in-law Karl Schill founded their chemical factory, they initially focused on the manufacture of speciality products for the leather industry. Not more than four years later, it was not a truly unselfish act that the new entrepreneurs developed their customer-focused philosophy. In order to cooperate even more closely with primary companies skilled in this sector, then based in Stuttgart, they moved their production facilities to Feuerbach in 1881, about 50 kilometers away from Heilbronn and now a part of the city of Stuttgart.

Thanks to their creativity and innovativeness, Seilacher and Schill soon succeeded to grow in size and importance by offering demand- and customer-oriented products and high quality standards, and they became known far beyond the Swabian language border.

To meet the ever-increasing export demands, in 1925 the company founded an additional production plant for speciality chemicals in Hamburg. Through Germany’s „Gateway to the World“, the needs of foreign markets could be served more efficiently and comfortable with immediate effect.

At the same time, the range of products has been expanded due to innovative research and development activities. While firstly market requirements have been satisfied by speciality chemicals for textile processing, soon additives for rubber processing have been added. The positive experiences of the textile industry and the availability of the raw materials are the basis for success for the new product line.

When in 1943 a heavy air raid largely destroyed the plant facilities in Hamburg, a part of the production has been relocated to Böblingen nearby Stuttgart. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the company rebuilt the production plant in Hamburg –more modern and bigger than before. The site in Böblingen has been continuously modernized and expanded as well.

Today both production sites in Hamburg and Böblingen work independently of one another in different product sectors and meet the needs of different industries. What both companies have still in common is the name, the high standards of quality and, of course, the customer orientation.

In Hamburg speciality chemicals for the rubber industry are developed and produced, such as  defoamers, polymer dispersions silicone emulsions and latex supply products. The site in Böblingen manufactures speciality chemicals for the production and processing of chemical fibers, textiles, leather and paper as well as additives for cosmetics. The growing success of the products on the US market led to the foundation of the Struktol Company of America in 1979 and, later, of the SNS Nanofiber Technology, both located in Ohio. Two pure production sites, one in Pirna, Germany, and one in Villa Rica, Georgia, complete the company's product portfolio.

Today, Schill+Seilacher is worldwide successful with six independently operating production sites with about 1,000 employees. The group of companies is foundation-owned and optimally equipped for the future.
We will continue to focus on solid growth thanks to traditional values,  target-oriented investments, a high level of research and development activities as well as to the orientation of market and customer requirements.