Horst-Gerhard Edelmeier pays tribute to his late partner and friend, Dr. Siegfried Koch, a respected ink industry expert.
Horst-Gerhard Edelmeier writes:
On Wednesday, 9 April my partner and friend of decades, Dr. Siegfried Koch, passed away after a long illness. For me, Siegfried was, and always will be, the epitome of chemical knowledge in our desktop ink and film coating market segment. With Siegfried, we lost not only an expert in cartridge refills, but someone you could rely on, who always had an answer ready when asked a question. And he was asked a lot.
Siegfried came to Pelikan via Geha in Hanover and soon took over Correctable Coating in Switzerland. We met through this work for Pelikan.
My wife and I had just started our own business; we had founded the pancake-cutting company REF GmbH in Hattingen when we came into contact with Siegfried. Through the pancakes, we met the owners of PMS, and we founded OCP GmbH in 1993 to manufacture desktop inks. It was becoming apparent that inkjet printers would replace typewriters as a means of communication. And to survive, ink was needed.
Siegfried and his staff developed the inks, and I and my staff sold them worldwide. From the first exhibition in 1996, we exhibited at the World Expo in Las Vegas and continued to do so until the last. This trade fair and our presence there laid the foundation for OCP’s success. Many will still remember the legendary post-exhibition parties at the Splash Bar in the Riviera Hotel. We stood in rows of four around the bar and discussed ink and inkjet, coloured inks and pigment inks. And Siegfried’s expertise made him a sought-after conversation partner, always and everywhere.
There are hundreds of stories to tell from that time, but the first one, as is often the case when it’s the first, has always stuck in my mind. After the first trade fair in Las Vegas, a man we had only met in Las Vegas, Jos Westhovens, came to visit us in Lage. At the time, Jos was buying inks from our then competitor Formulabs in Spain. He arrived with a large van, loaded it full of our inks, and drove off. I said to Siegfried at the time: there go our inks, and we’ll never see them again, and we won’t get any money either. We actually didn’t see them again, but it wasn’t what we expected. Jos was successful with our inks, paid for them all, and bought more and more and more until the very last day, when he had to close his distribution company in France for other reasons. And through Jos’s contacts around the world, we got to know and appreciate many partners and business colleagues: Rod Lovie in South Africa, Fatih Akici in Turkey, Rick Krska in the USA, Mike Warner and Peter Müller in the USA, Brian Stokes in Australia, Luiz Rodriguez in Spain, Andrès Fabbri in Argentina, and so on. The close supplier/customer relationship with Cabot, our most important raw material supplier and with Nick Jones there, also dates back to this time. Siegfried has always valued and nurtured the connection with Cabot in particular. Siegfried was also able to provide many impulses for the development of new dispersions. He was always a sought-after conversation partner and advisor, all over the world.
Siegfried, rest in peace. We will all miss you, and I especially.
