Hygienic, eco-friendly, efficient
OROPON®, bating agent for animal skins and furs
With the invention of OROPON® at the beginning of the twentieth century, the chemist Dr. Otto Röhm started a new chapter in the story of leather manufacturing that, at that time, was still relatively undeveloped. Before the widespread introduction of OROPON®, leather bating was based on methods using substances like dog excrement and pigeon droppings. These techniques were not only unhygienic, they also generated an extremely unpleasant odor.
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In 1905, Otto Röhm first started to look closely at leather manufacturing and bating of animal skins. Two years later, he discovered the effectiveness of the enzymes extracted, for example, from the pancreas of pigs in the treatment of the skins. This led him to develop a method suitable for the treatment of all types of animal skins and furs. This marked the birth of the OROPON® bating agent.
In 1907, once OROPON® had gone into standard production, Röhm and the merchant, Otto Haas, founded the company Röhm & Haas. |
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In 1909, in order to have their production site close to the leather industry, they re-located to Darmstadt. Otto Haas traveled through much of Europe in order to promote the new product. It was not long before the first international sales agencies were established. Haas set up a branch in Philadelphia and started to export to the USA and, in 1911, the first exports were sent out to Japan. Thus, within a few years, OROPON®, which was named after Otto Röhm, had replaced the manure bate; the latter was not only unhygienic but also produced unreliable results.
The product earned its first award when it won a gold medal at the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1911. The preparations, which were improved continuously, led to increasingly shorter treatment times for skins and furs and consequently to reduced water consumption and to more environmentally-friendly working methods.
In 1996, the entire business in auxiliary agents for leather was divested into the TFL (Together for Leather) joint venture in Rheinfelden. TFL was sold in 2001, after the formation of Degussa AG.