The roots of the EPC Group go back to 1873, when August Oskar Henkel registered business to the princedom of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. The purpose of the company was agricultural machineryengineering. Until 1933, the Henkel family successfully produced several types of machines. After World War II, the company was discontinued, but the owners kept working as engineers. After the German reunification, Peter Henkel founded the EPC Engineering Consulting GmbH as a limited liability company in 1993. The company began trading in 1994. The company was a spin-off of the Chemiefaserkombinat Schwarza, a former publicly owned operation in East Germany. In the early days of the EPC Group, the company recruited many employees of the Chemiefaserkombinat Schwarza, particularly chemists and engineers. Some of them have worked for the engineering business unit of the Thüringer Faser AG, one of the successor companies of the Chemiefaserkombinat Schwarza. The company's activities were crucial for the development of the Chemiefaserkombinat Schwarza to a modern industrial park for industries of all kind. 1995, Peter Henkel founded a second company named EPC Technology GmbH. Today, both the EPC Engineering Consulting GmbH and the EPC Technology GmbH, as well as other companies, are subsidiaries of the EPC Holding GmbH, doing business as EPC Group. Ten years after its foundation, the EPC Group and all of its subsidiaries had about 150 employees. In the following years, exports continuously increased, especially to the Arab world, Asia and Russia. For example, the EPC Group built a plant for plastic granulates in Saudi Arabia, which is one of the largest revamp projects in the world. Similar facilities for the production of Polycarbonate have been built in China, with a capacity of more than 100,000 tons per year. These projects were recognized as important for both the company and the whole industry. In 2009, the EPC Group acquired the CRYOTEC Anlagenbau GmbH, a cryogenic plant construction company in Wurzen, Saxony, with roots going back to the year 1879. Today, the HI Bauprojekt GmbH and RMN Ingenieure GmbH are also part of the EPC Group.
Operations
The EPC Group builds turnkey facilities for chemicals, polymers and fibers, pharma and fine chemicals, renewable energies, technical gases and biotechnologies, as well as infrastructure projects. In addition to the design and construction, the supervision of the commissioning and operation of industrial plants are an important part of the business. Most of the revenues come from projects in foreign countries. The management board of the EPC Group consists of Jens, Ulf, Nadine and Tim Henkel, the second generation of their family to run the company. The headquarters of the EPC Holding GmbH, which is the holding company of the EPC Group, are in Meuselbach-Schwarzmühle, where the machinery factory of August Oskar Henkel was located. The EPC Group and all of its subsidiaries have locations in Alzenau, Arnstadt, Gera, Jena, Leuna, Rudolstadt and Wurzen as well as Moscow. Another office in the Thuringian state capital of Erfurt is being planned. Since year 2000, the EPC Group is a member of the Bundesverband mittelständische Wirtschaft e.V., a well-known German association for small and medium-sized enterprises. The EPC Group continually supports regional sports teams, for example the football clubFC Einheit Rudolstadt.
