10.03.2025

M&C 1985 – how it all started ...

In 1985, four junior entrepreneurs submitted their documents to the competent commercial register for the joint establishment of the initial company M&C Products Analysentechnik GmbH, based in Ratingen. For the founding team – Werner Haubrichs, Wilhelm Ostermeier, Helmut Gawlik and Bernhard Benz – this marked the end of an intensive preparatory period, paving the way for self-employment. Already actively involved in measurement and control technology, the founders had decided to ‘go for it’ in the field of extractive gas sampling and gas conditioning in industrial applications and to take this big but risky step together. The question that hovered over the start-up was how potential customers would respond to the young company.

The adventure began by renting a small warehouse in Ratingen. This was soon followed by moving into a little office and workshop building in the backyard of an industrial estate. Later, it was said that the founders did not have the budget for larger premises. But even Bill Gates started Microsoft in a small garage. Some of the most incredible success stories begin in the most modest settings.

As a next step, a branch was soon established in Aach in southern Germany, near Lake Constance. The local management there was taken over by Bernhard Benz, who lived nearby, while the other three co-founders remained in Ratingen. Both towns are still M&C's German locations today, albeit at different addresses.

Shortly after the company was officially founded, the first employees joined the team. The start-up enterprise felt its way into the market and recorded its first commercial successes, at that time based products SP21 (gas sample probe), ECP (Peltier gas cooler) and EC (compressor gas cooler). All three devices are still part of M&C’s standard portfolio today, in evolved forms. The first filter, the ‘forerunner’ of today's extensive range of M&C filters, was also developed at that time.

Due to the positive business development, there was an increasing need to look for larger office and production space, but that will be the subject of our following second chapter of M&C’s history.

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