September 4, 2014 – Degussa Group announces the acquisition of the Schellhorn & Roth GmbH & Co. KG precious metals refinery in Pforzheim, Germany. With the acquisition of this well established and traditional business, Degussa now expands its activities beyond just the trading of precious metals products and into additional parts of the value added chain.
The acquisition of the company in Pforzheim, which filed for insolvency under its former owner earlier this year, strengthens Degussa in two specialist fields. Firstly, the reprocessing of scrap precious metals such as jewellery, investment metals or production waste, and secondly the production of upstream products, i.e. semi-finished parts for the jewellery industry.
“The acquisition of the refinery allows us to further complement our product and service portfolio”, explains Wolfgang Wrzesniok-Rossbach, CEO of Degussa. “The entry into the industrial processing of precious metals is the next logical step in the course of Degussa’s expansion. Incidentally, the historical Degussa also had its roots in the production and recycling of gold and silver products”, he added.
Degussa expressly thanked the administrator Alexander Saponjic who had successfully managed the company over the past few months and now hands it over to the Frankfurt based precious metals company. In the following months, Degussa will gradually modernise its new Pforzheim branch with state-of-the-art processing technology.
To date, the acquired Schellhorn & Roth refinery, which was founded in 1946, has been one of the smaller precious metals refiners in Pforzheim. Since 1984, the production has been located at the company’s current site in Pforzheim which will also be maintained after the acquisition by Degussa.
Degussa will retain the employees of Schellhorn & Roth in the newly formed division of the business. The executive responsibility for the on-site production will be carried out by Mr Joachim Prior. Being the former technical manager at PRIOR Engineering Services AG, Switzerland, he contributes a comprehensive wealth of experience.
The website of the Degussa Group you may find here.
A glimpse of the activities of Schellhorn & Roth you may get in this video (in German).