🠈 Henkel AG & Company, KGaA 🠊
Henkel AG & Company, KGaA
Henkel AG & Company, KGaA is a multinational conglomerate holding popular food and household brands based in Düsseldorf, Germany. They trade on the Frankfurt exchange with the symbol: HEN.
Their American holdings expanded greatly with the purchase of The Dial Corporation which they rebranded to Henkel North American Consumer Goods which is headquartered in Stamford, Ct.
Corporate History
This section lists select transactions for the firm.
- 1876: Fritz Henkel founded company in Aachen as Henkel & Cie to manufacture a detergent called "Universalwaschmittel".
- 1878: The company relocated to Düsseldorf where they began to manufacture bleaching soda.
- 1886: Henkel expanded to Austria.
- 1923: Henkel began making adhesives.
- The Allies took over the company after WWII and began allowing the company to gradually rebuild.
- 1960: Henkel acquired US based Standard Chemical Products, Inc..
- 1962: Henkel acquired Sichel-Werke AG based in Hannover which made adhesives.
- 1983: Henkel acquired the AOK facial care brand from von Heyden GmbH.
- 1984: Henkel acquired Teroson of Heidelberg. This adhesive firm was founded in 1898.
- 1995: Henkel acquired Hans Schwarzkopf GmbH which makes cosmetics.
- In 1996 Henkel bought Thiem Automotive from National Starch and Chemical Company.
- 1997: Henkel acquired Loctite Corporation.
- 2004: Henkel acquired The Dial Corporation.
History of Dial
The history of Dial Corporation is complicated. A meat packaging company called Armour made tallow based soaps. Tallow is a beef byproduct. In 1948 they created an antibacterial soap which they named "Dial." The soap became popular and Armour started selling other consumer products.
Greyhound, a bus line, acquired Armour. Bus traffic dropped significantly during the 1980s. Fearing layoffs or pay cuts, the union held a strike that got vicious. Greyhound sold its bus line and changed its name to Dial Corp. This company was huge.
The company invested in recreational and hospitality properties. Dial Corp spun off its consumer brands. The spin off adopted the name "The Dial Corporation." The parent firm then changed its name to Viad.
- 1985 Greyhound acquired the consumer products business of Purex Industries, Inc.
- 2006: Dial acquired Right Guard from The Gillette Company, a subsidiary of Proctor & Gamble.
- 2016: Henkel acquired The Sun Products Corporation which included the laundry brands: all, Sun and Snuggle.