DVN was invited by Jürgen Ewald to visit the company ORAFOL Europe GmbH in Oranienburg. Jürgen Ewald is an old friend back from my university time in Darmstadt. He took his time to guide me around the company for a half a day and he presented many surprises.
To be honest, only insiders know about ORAFOL and the brands ORALITE and ORACAL, but everyone sees and uses these products every day. ORAFOL is one of the few leading manufacturers of self-adhesive tapes, graphical and retroreflective sheeting. This means that most of the world’s retroreflective traffic signs, other road safety equipment, license plate sheeting, reflective markings for emergency vehicles and contour marking for trucks and trailers are made by ORAFOL. Car wrapping films, window- and floor-graphic products as well the huge range of self-adhesive sheeting for digitally printed advertisements up to the sheeting application for aircraft livery designs and many other of adhesive tape products are produced in Oranienburg, near Berlin, Germany, or in one of its international subsidiaries.
That alone sounds exciting, but what is exciting is the story behind it. Today’s ORAFOL was founded in 1808 as Wibelitz Farbenwerkstatt, and moved to Oranienburg in 1919. In 1957, during the GDR era, it was renamed Hannalin KG and later, in 1972, became the state-owned company VEB Spezialfarben Oranienburg. In 1960 the first retroreflective sheeting named Mikrolux was produced, in 1976 the production of the first self-adhesive graphic product named ORACAL was started. With the « Wende », the reunification of East and West Germany, an important part of history took place. Other global players had been interested to buy the company for a low price, but Dr. Holger Loclair, during this time operations manager, had the spirit and the vision to continue the business and to transfer the company to a privatized family owned business.
In 1995, the foundation stone for the new ORAFOL factory was laid. From this time Dr. Loclair started the expansion of ORAFOL all over the world with courageous and visionary decisions. He started with a presence in the USA in 2003, and a first production plant was established there in 2005. With acquisitions in USA and Australia the graphical business area increased globally. But the big deal was done in 2011, when ORAFOL acquired the Reflexite cooperation with established global subsidiaries and implemented the manufacturing of the prismatic sheeting technology in the product portfolio. From 2017, subsidiaries in Dubai and India had been founded by ORAFOL’s own activities and had been followed up by additional acquisitions in USA, Canada and Mexico.
Some numbers from 2023: 2900 employees worldwide (1300 in Oranienburg), €870m turnover, in total a €300m investment in 2022 and 2023, €4m investment in renewable energy, 300,000 m2 factory area, named as one of the top 50 innovative companies in Germany and several other awards wining such as “Best Managed Company”. Determination, perseverance and assertiveness are the factors that have led Dr. Loclair to his continuous success.
The factory tour goes through the production hall for the converting processes. It starts with a first impressive view on huge tanks containing thousands of litres of glue. The main production machine type is called “RECO”, which means “REverse COating” and which is the main principle of the manufacturing process for the sheeting products. Several production steps from intermediate products to the final product are manufactured on these lines. Later, the other processes for refining and converting of the reflective sheeting had been seen, such as the different printing technologies, which are screen printing of the colours for the traffic sign face sheeting, printing by laser-technology of logos or identifying watermarks or gravure printing technology for the manufacturing of multi coloured license plate sheeting. For example, using digital printing machines can print colourful logos on the contour marking tapes, for individualization the marking of the trucks and trailers. Currently three additional coating lines will be installed and will increase the number of them in total up to 32 in the Oranienburg plant.
After printing and drying, several plotter-lines cut out the printed sign face sheeting, no matter which kind of shape. They will be packed carefully for shipping to the customers. Laser markings on the glass-bead sheeting showing several information, which are required by the authorities and test-houses for traceability reason and market surveillance based on various standards. Packaging is also important.
Specially designed cardboard boxes are used for worldwide shipping to prevent damage. For development purposes and for production control, ORAFOL uses a retroreflective measuring system and a colour measuring system for from LMT Lichtmesstechnik Berlin GmbH, which are only a few kilometres away.
ORAFOL is a very successful company with modern, state of the art production equipment, highly automated and with full digital process control. Quick decisions and a slim organization structure allows implementing new investments, which lead to the continuous grow of the company. The ambitious and committed management team and the vision of the owner and CEO Dr. Holger Loclair are the core of ORAFOL’s global success. The visit was, as I said, a great surprise.
