In the Heart of Europe - The Dow Chemical Company

Rheinmünster quickly
develops into a modern
production site – this is
a picture of the facilities
as of 2006.
The quaint fishing village Greffern
(later merging into the Rheinmünster
municipality) seems an ideal location –
situated in the Rhine river valley in
Baden-Württemberg with the new
“Autobahn” from Frankfurt/Main to
Basel nearby. The local politicians assist
in the establishment of industrial operations
and Dow soon buys real estate:
420 individual plots from approximately
250 owners. The German magazine
“Der Spiegel” violently condemns the
purchase while the Greffern community
is not deterred. In 1965, initial construction
work starts on the company
premises. On October 22, 1966, a facility
producing the insulating material
STYROFOAM starts operations. Dr.
Milan F. Ondras, CEO of Dow Deutsch-
land GmbH (and first director of the
Frankfurt sales office in 1960), welcomes
the guests of honor such as the
Minister President of Baden-Württemberg
and the US Ambassador in Bonn:
“We have dreamt of this day and
worked hard to get here.” Over the following
years, the Dow Rheinmünster
site grows quickly.
Dow also gains a foothold up north
in Germany. When searching a location
for the large chlorine-alkali complex,
the company identifies Stade. This city
of 45,000 residents is situated west of
Hamburg on the Elbe river. Stade is a
hanseatic city with a rich history, but
plenty of economic problems. The state
of Lower Saxony acts quickly and wants
to transform Stade into a modern industrial
city. It therefore supports the settlement
of companies in the new industrial
park of Stade-Bützfleth on the Elbe
bank. In addition to Dow, an aluminum
factory becomes domiciled here, as well
as a nuclear power plant supplying its
first electricity in 1972. Nuclear energy
is not yet a point of contention. The antinuclear
movement in Germany starts
in 1975, during protests against a power
plant project at Kaiserstuhl in Southern
Baden.
In Stade, Dow wants to use electrolysis
for producing chlorine – the chemical
industry’s workhorse and a base
substance for countless products of
everyday life. Dow, one of the largest
In 1967, the site in Rheinmünster
is connected to
the railway network only via
a narrow gauge branch
terminal line. In Rastatt, the
site wagons are pulled onto
railroad carrier trucks which
are transported to Greffern
on the narrow gauge stretch. In 1989, the new dispatching center just outside
Rheinmünster-Greffern is inaugurated.