From pollution into business

Standing in front of his factory, Kurt Itzigehl surveys the chimneys of Deuna Cement Works reaching high into the sky. For years, the dust from left-over building materials had been blown unfiltered into the air. "The cement dust covered the rooves of the houses, the trees and the fields with a grayish film," the engineer recalls. It was as if someone had forgotten to add any colors to the small area in northwest Thuringia.

It all started in a garage

For years, the now over 70-year-old worked in the East German cement factory in Deuna. Then came German reunification. "It was the best thing that could have happened to me," Kurt Itzigehl says. The engineer jumped at the chance and started his own business, InduServ Ltd. In his garage at home he used old cement industry filters to build new, better ones.

But this first business idea fell flat: the cemernt works, which quickly had to adjust to new environmental standards, did not receive any money from the state for converted filters. Subsidies only existed for completely newly built filters. "At that point I sat down and we changed our concept. We scrapped the idea of reconstruction and developed the first new filter." This was the so called pocket filter, approved in 1993.

Plenty to filter

Sales of Itzigehl's new filter soared. In the former East Germany there was plenty to filter: soot, dust and fumes. And that was throughout the whole construction material industry. Soon the company moved out of the garage into a new building and expanded. Kurt Itzigehl contacted his old colleagues from the industry and gave them new jobs. Today his company InduServ has around 70 employees.

The construction plans are displayed on large white boards in the workshop. The components are cut to the exact centimeter and then welded together. Itzigehl's company now develops and builds not only filters, but whole factories.

Twenty-five years after unification and after Kurt Itzigehl started his business, his customers are no longer only from the cement industry, but also from the mining industry. He now sends his employers all over Germany to install and service filters. Wherever there are filters, someone from Itzigehl's company is there too.

The ugliest company in Germany

The equipment for monitoring the filters came from Holger Födisch. He also started his own business after Geman reunification. The then 30-year-old made a deal with the "Treuhandanstalt," the agency that privatized East German assets, and bought for what was then 300,000 deutschmarks what he describes as "the ugliest company in Germany." It was part of a factory for dust removal technology in the town of Markranstädt , near Leipzig in Saxony. He worked there as a department manager.

Like for Kurt Itzigehl, the initial phase was difficult. For the first few years, Födisch, a doctor of process engineering, continued working as a lecturer in order to be able to keep the firm above water. "We started with offering services like testing whether power stations could meet the new standards. When we stopped getting those jobs, we set our minds to developing our own equipment," says the 54-year-old.

Exports increasingly important

The experiment paid off. The company builds, installs and monitors equipment which measures the pollution from dust and gas in a wide variety of industrial plants. With 250 employees, the company is now among the leading German firms in the field of environmental measurement technology. Including the sales from his subsidiary firms, Födisch logged around 29 million euros in turnover last year. With customers around Europe and in South Africa, Födisch is increasingly focusing on exports.

Biggest potential market: China

However, the most important potential market is China. Sales there have grown massively, especially since the government in Beijing started to deal with environmental issues. Lots of coal-fired power stations are being fitted with new technology, including dust measuring equipment. Holger Födisch now flies to China twice a year for negotiations with customers. His own factory in Markranstädt, where it all started, was also renovated long ago. Today, no one would recognize this light building with large windows as what was once "the ugliest company in Germany."