2002 Every year again: child blessing

It's like breathing in and breathing out. Concentration movements – the Heinrich Overlack family tribe acquires all shares from the heirs of the Ed and Lutz brothers over the course of decades – are followed by growth spurts. Between 1990 and 2001, the ten grandchildren of Hans and Isolde Overlack are born: Fanny (*1990, Peter's daughter), Michel (*1991, Anne's son), Till (*1992, Peter's son), Emma (*1993, Anne's daughter), Nele (*1994, Peter's daughter), Laura (*1995, Eve's daughter), Wendel (*1997, Anne's son), Rebecca (*1997 Eve's daughter), Lotte (*1999, Anne's daughter) and Clara (*2001, Eve's daughter). All of them – this is already foreseeable at their birth – will one day become co-owners of Gebr. Overlack. Concentrating the company in just one hand, which Hans had once worked on so devotedly and Peter had dreamed of for a while, has long since exceeded the economic possibilities of all the partners.

2003 Nest warmth

"The company Overlack is a family business. And not only as a postulate on the website and in terms of ownership, but especially in the way the management deals with the employees and the employees with each other. With all their quirks and handicaps, with all their abilities and competencies. Just as it should be as a rule in families. Above all, however, the feeling of belonging is desired and is conveyed, sometimes in a somewhat prickly and rough-around-the-edges manner, but always authentically. There is appreciation for everyone, the leaders and the workers. This has probably made a works council unnecessary. To remain in the image of the family: If the parents take good care, the children don't need child welfare services."

2004 The Advisory Board

Where so much dynamic change takes place, constants are needed. And where such a visionary managing director is at work, and this for many years also in sole responsibility, there is a need for supervision, advice, control, or more positively formulated: a benevolent as well as competent companionship, which is always in a position to exercise objective criticism and to point out alternative options for action. With the retirement of Hans Overlack in the summer of 1992, a three-member advisory board is set up at Gebrüder Overlack.

Christoph Grafe, who holds a doctorate in business administration, has been a member of this advisory board since its foundation until today. Like Harald Vergossen, who succeeds Axel Wiesenhütter in 2001, Grafe studied business administration in Cologne. It was a wise decision on the part of senior Hans Overlack to bring his son's two close college friends and thus the next generation onto the supervisory board. In fact, the two of them not only take on the function of commercially competent advisors on the advisory board, but over the years also that of balancing mediators, where the different views of the world of chemical trading of father and son once again clash in a spirited manner. To this day, they enjoy the unwavering trust of the entire Overlack family.

When Hans Overlack leaves the advisory board at the end of 2002, Carl Hugo Erbslöh takes over his role as representative of the chemical trade. He remains on the advisory board until the entry of Hannover Finanz into the company necessitates a reorganization of the supervisory relationships.  

Participation in Novochem, Hungary
today: Novochem, Hungary
Shareholding in Pecsi Agroker, Hungary 
today: Pecsi Agorker, Hungary
incl. shareholding in Novochem, Romania
today: OQEMA, Romania

2005 Vision II

For the second time since 1994, a vision process is being launched in the company. The target year is now 2022, and three working groups are working on the "Report from the future on what will have been achieved by then". The future scenario still insists on this determination with good reason: "Western Europe, except Germany, is not a strategic priority for Overlack. We are the Eastern expert in distribution!"

The management will gradually move away from this focus on the East over the next few years. This realization dates back to 2009: "Sometimes the big truths are very simple. If you want to position yourself strategically well today, chemical distribution is not necessarily a global business, but ideally one that encompasses the entire continent of Europe. At least if you look at it from a location in the middle of Europe."

2006 The Overlack-Villa

In 2006, it is still a gem: the villa that was built 80 years earlier by textile manufacturer Walter Schubarth on Aachener Straße. After being rented out for residential purposes for 20 years, the building is now being completely absorbed by the company. The management moves to the upper floor, and the first floor is given over to originally furnished meeting rooms.

Between 2006 and 2011, further foundations and participations are added in Lithuania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Slovenia.

Participation in Lemro, Grevenbroich   
today: Lemro, Grevenbroich
Acquisition of Eurochemas, Lithuania   
today: OQEMA, Lithuania

2007 Do you love what you do?

"Success, I have learned, is not possible without employees, fellow human beings, co-thinkers and co-creators in an organization. The people at Overlack, who work for the company as if it were their own, also make it their company to a certain extent through this identification.

What is then still necessary and indispensable are the good, well-known virtues that have tended to be scorned since 1968: Diligence, care and order, clarity – in thinking. And clarity – in the heart.

Live dangerously,
Stay open to new things, ready to learn,
an amazer;
love what you do!
These are the three keys to a fulfilling work life."

Foundation Juli.O GmbH  
Today: Juli.O GmbH

2008 The Town Palace in Ozorkow

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Polish subsidiary, the shareholders' meeting is held in Ozorków in June 2007. Ten years earlier, the subsidiary was founded in Lódź. The company administration is representatively housed in the historic villa of the textile entrepreneur Friedrich Schlösser from 1848 – an impressive neo-Renaissance building, which the passionate builder Peter Overlack had restored by Polish craftsmen.

2009 Ou Fu Lai

“Ou Fu Lai" – in English: “Happiness that comes from Europe" is the name of the youngest company daughter in faraway China, whose foundation in Nanjing dates back to 2005 after years of strategic preparation. However, even though "Ou Fu Lai Chemicals Co. Ltd." almost sounds like the German Overlack, all the lofty dreams and passion with which the chemical traders from faraway Europe plunged into the Far Eastern adventure for seven long years ultimately failed due to the "no longer calculable official requirements" and the so foreign Chinese mentality. Due to "sustained lack of success", the Chinese subsidiary is finally closed in 2012.

Foundation of the company in Bulgaria 
today: OQEMA, Bulgaria

2010 On a treasure hunt …

"When considering the reasons why we are not active throughout Europe, the answer is obvious: Neither is there a lack of courage, nor – at least I hope – a lack of competence, nor a lack of internationality, language skills, etc. The answer to this question is that we do not have the necessary resources. Nor, to be honest, is there probably a lack of opportunities and possibilities. What is lacking is money! The capital side in a medium-sized company is regularly not such that it could make such expansive leaps possible. And unfortunately, the same is true for Overlack.

I had reached that point [writes the managing director in retrospect in January 2015] and then I continued to think logically, I am now somewhere in 2009 and I thought: we should check whether something can be done about this capital side. And when you talk about capital, you mean equity in this context. Our lines of credit with the banks were maxed out, it wasn't feasible, it didn't make sense to expand them further. If we wanted to get into an expansion mode, we needed private equity, equity capital.

So it happened that in 2010 we actually started to take a concrete interest in private equity and to have discussions in this regard. We spent a long time, several years, looking for private equity houses that were not of Anglo-American mentality and origin, but thought and acted in line with medium-sized companies. We certainly had contact with 30–40 private equity houses."   

Purchase Chem & Pol, Poland (Warsaw).  
today: part of OQEMA, Poland
Purchase Eurosam, Czech Republic (Senov)
today: part of OQEMA, Czech Republic
Purchase of shareholding Slovchema, Slovakia
today: part of OQEMA, Slovakia
Purchase of shareholding in Ukraine    
today: OQEMA, Ukraine

2011 The chimneys III

In the company newsletter round-up in spring 2011, Peter Overlack recalls a striking architectural element in the factory courtyard that is now missing:

"Everything is in flux – things change – that is a law of nature. Things that are cherished have to give way. That's also a kind of natural law – even if we don't always like it. But without renewal there is no power.

With the invention of the steam engine and the beginning of industrialization, an architecturally striking structure became effective in urban planning: the factory chimney. Almost every company dedicated to "modern" production processes needed the use of steam. The factory chimneys sprouted out of the landscape, even more serious and striking than wind turbines today. On old city views, dozens of chimneys rise into the sky. Smoking chimneys are also to be found on historic company letterheads, whose letterheads lovingly present their own factories with much pride of ownership.

The saying that inspired my grandfather and great-uncle when they were building up their chemical trading business dates back to this time: 'Wherever there's a chimney smoking,' my grandfather taught me as a seven-year-old with a raised finger, 'there's also chemicals being used.' Overlack, as a company geared more to commercial business, did not need large-volume energy-generating plants – and yet it had a factory chimney. At the time, the central heating system was connected to it.

Already 40 years ago (I remember the demolition well, I will have been 13 or 14 years old at that time), it was cut in half. Because it threatened to topple over. The remaining half had peace – until it became clear in recent months that not only the chimney, but also all the buildings surrounding it were dilapidated. So at the beginning of January 2011 ... the excavator arrived.

The chimney, still clearly visible in our photo, is gone today. The same applies to the flat office building in front of it. This is where Heinrich Overlack had his office in the 1950s. And this is where Hans Overlack, the second generation, sat in 1953, having just joined the company as a young commercial employee. It was in this building that Hans Overlack met Isolde Seidel, his father's secretary. The same Isolde Seidel who later became his wife - and my mother.

Family stories at their best ...
Everything is in flux – things are changing. The buildings are not there now."

Foundation of the company in Slovenia  
today: OQEMA, Slovenia
With Stockmeier purchase/foundation of Quaron/France.
Sold to Stockmeier in 2018