Major birthdays are always a special reason to celebrate, and today Röhm is celebrating the 90th birthday of its flagship brand Plexiglas. When he entered the brand in the trademark register on August 9, 1933, Dr. Otto Röhm, chemist and company founder, laid the foundations for the company’s future success.
The trademark registration was preceded by intensive years of research: Otto Röhm and his team had begun working on the development of plastics at the beginning of the 20th century. Their research enabled them to polymerize methyl methacrylate for the first time. The result was a crystal-clear, hard, and breakproof plastic, polymethyl methacrylate or PMMA, which opened up a whole world of applications. Röhm had it registered as a trademark under the name Plexiglas.
Since then, nothing has been able to stand in the way of the success of Plexiglas, because products under the Plexiglas brand are extremely versatile: they are easy to machine, can be formed easily, and given almost any color; they are glossy, robust, and extremely weather-resistant. Plexiglas is now a protected trademark in more than 100 countries, including in Europe, Asia, and Africa. “Plexiglas is the original. We invented it and see ourselves as a partner for industrial customers who want to develop something new,” says Michael Pack, Managing Director of Röhm.
From the outset, Plexiglas has been available in two variants. One variant is the semi-finished product, such as sheets, tubes, rods, and films, that can be made into all kinds of products by means of fabricating methods such as sawing, grinding, and forming. The other is the granulate variant, which is used in injection molding and extrusion in the form of Plexiglas molding compounds.
Plexiglas is used in a wide range of industries: from the automotive and lighting industry and the household appliance, furniture and shopfitting sectors to architecture, greenhouse construction, and spectacular giant aquariums and deep-sea submarines. “Plexiglas from Röhm has been involved in many application areas from the outset and has since played a role in countless innovations,” says Siamak Djafarian, Senior Vice President of the Molding Compounds Business Unit at Röhm. And thanks to the versatility and robustness of Plexiglas, the applications of tomorrow are being created today. “Our experts are constantly reinventing Plexiglas and expanding its performance with each new generation,” says Falk Majert, Head of the Acrylic Products Business Unit at Röhm.
In the year of its brand’s 90th birthday, the long-established company has opened a new research center at its site in Worms. And Röhm is also constantly expanding its research activities at an international level, with innovation centers in the US and China. As company founder Otto Röhm once did by registering Plexiglas, the company Röhm continues to set the course for the future.
Röhm is therefore focused on sustainable transformation. The company aims to achieve climate-neutral production by 2050. A key factor toward achieving this is the introduction of a waste management strategy. Because Plexiglas can be recycled multiple times. Already successfully launched on the market are sustainable Plexiglas "proTerra" sheets and molding compounds with a reduced CO₂ footprint.
In this way, Röhm is continuing its success story with innovations and leading technologies. “Otto Röhm was a pioneer of his time with the development of Plexiglas, displaying courage, tenacity, and ingenuity,” says Michael Pack. “This tradition and this spirit live on in all our activities to this day.”
