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Company history

System solutions for your plastics –take a tour with us from the past to today and into the future

ProTec Polymer Processing GmbH in Bensheim is the result of several corporate mergers and acquisitions and its history has seen numerous twists and turns.

The company's history dates back to the post-war period when the plant engineering division of Filterwerke MANN+HUMMEL GmbH was founded in Ludwigsburg in 1948 with a focus on paper air filter manufacture. Germany's economic miracle brought with it new materials and technologies and saw an expansion in the variety of new moldable polymers and processing options and applications. In the 1960s, MANN+HUMMEL developed the first polymer filter for automotive use, so taking its first steps as a plastics processor. 1968 saw the introduction of the first SOMOS^® dry air dryer in filter production. Demand for materials handling systems in production areas grew apace. The drying system was followed in 1973 by a dosing unit from VOLLMAR with the first coloring machine. 1989 saw an upgrade to production systems with the first gravimetric conveying and dosing unit.

In 1993, MANN+HUMMEL itself began to manufacture systems and lines for the plastics processing industry and acquired the then market leader in plastics drying, SOMOS GmbH in Weiterstadt. 1997 then saw the purchase of VOLLMAR Anlagentechnik based in Königswinter, a successful volumetric and gravimetric dosing systems specialist founded in 1982. At this point, MANN+HUMMEL merged its plant engineering division with SOMOS GmbH and VOLLMAR Anlagentechnik, renaming the business MANN+HUMMEL ProTec GmbH.

Independently of the developments at MANN+HUMMEL ProTec, in 2003 the international Schoeller Group, Pullach, took over OHL Apparatebau & Verfahrenstechnik GmbH, the foundation stone of tumble reactor technology which was later to play an important role for ProTec. In the same year, parallel to the development in the Schoeller Group, MANN+HUMMEL ProTec completed work on its new site in Bensheim and relocated the former Vollmar factory from Königswinter and the former SOMOS manufacturing site in Weiterstadt to the new site in the German state of Hesse.

2005 saw MANN+HUMMEL ProTec's activities concentrated in Bensheim, the Ludwigsburg manufacturing activities being relocated there.
In 2012, the Schoeller Group took over MANN+HUMMEL ProTec and merged it with OHL Engineering GmbH. The new company acquired its current name ProTec Polymer Processing GmbH, combining under one roof the engineering expertise for building systems and lines for materials handling and for plastics materials treatment (solid-state post-condensation using OHL tumble reactor technology).

In April 2013, the present Managing Director Peter Theobald strengthened ProTec's management team and, working on his many years of sales experience in Asian markets, began to focus on developing sales in Asia, new sales offices in Shanghai and Singapore being opened the same year.

2015 saw the most recent acquisition with the takeover of PolymersNet GmbH, Lampertheim. Up until that point, ProTec had been the exclusive distributor of PolymersNet's systems for manufacturing long fiber reinforced thermoplastics (LFT). In the course of the takeover, the Lampertheim materials testing pultrusion line was relocated, with expansions and upgrades, to a specially designed technology center at ProTec's headquarters in Bensheim.

Today, ProTec is an international one-stop shop supplier of the Schoeller Group and, with its expanded know-how, a leader in materials handling, polymer treatment, recycling and complete LFT-lines for plastics manufacturers and processors.