1965-1990

Brenntag launched partnerships in the mid-1960s with numerous manufacturers whose products it still sells today. We worked with both our western and eastern neighbors so successfully that even American manufacturers were interested in acquiring Brenntag during Stinnes Bank's negotiations with its creditors.

The sails for Brenntag's going multinational were set in the late 1960s when we started expanding outside of Germany. Our first foreign acquisition was NV Balder, a Belgian company acquired in 1966. In the 1970s Brenntag acquired a small distribution company in the United States, that formed the basis for the Stinnes Oil & Chemical Company (SOCO), which was reincorporated as Brenntag, Inc., in 1998. Companies in Denmark, Italy, France and Japan were all added in the pursuit of gaining a foothold in the European and North American chemicals distribution business. In the case of our Japanese subsidiary, which was a joint venture with a local partner, the major goal was exporting Japanese products to Europe.

Brenntag's international contracts turned out to be extremely valuable in 1973 when petroleum products were in short supply due to the oil crisis. By the 100th anniversary of our founding, Brenntag had approximately 600 employees and annual sales of DM 1 billion for the first time. In that same year a joint venture to import/export chemicals with Russia was formed. It was the second German-Russian joint venture, preceded only by the German company that imports Russian vodka.

In the 1980s, Brenntag turned its heating business and heating oil distribution operations over to Raab Karcher, receiving the latter's chemicals distribution business in exchange. Brenntag also expanded in the USA acquiring, Lynch (1980), Textile Chemical (1981), Delta (1986), Crown (1989), and PB&S Chemical (1989) - all traditional chemical distributors. We quickly declared our intention of becoming a market leader in the USA as well as in Europe.