1876 - 1973
v/ H.E. Gosch og O.P. Davidsen
The story of
H. E. Gosch
& Co. is very long,
if you have to tell
the full story.
Instead, we have
chosen in this section of
telling a very
sporadic summary
and then
selected in
the next long
time to tell
a number of stories
about the various situations that
occurred in HE
Gosch &
Co..
These you can read
at this link:
H.E.
Gosch & Co, stories to be told.
Heinrich Eduard Gosch had been a traveling salesman for Ludvig
Hintzes match stick factory in Schleswig and Flensburg, and when
the latter factory moved to Copenhagen and shortly after was
sold to Anders Sørensen, he employed HE
Gosch
as salesman and bookkeeper.
After Anders Sørensen in 1875 unsuccessfully had sought to
transform his company to Frederiksberg Tændstikfabrik limited
Gosch found himself free to start his own business and in
Sundbyøster on Amager he found a suitable site in Jacobsgade ,
where he could build a factory.
Already at the end of 1875 factory stood finished and the
11th of
January 1876 he could for the first time announce about the
brands from his new factory " Phoenix " .
During the summer Oscar Davidsen contacted Gosch to
establish cooperation as his partner in the firm Pallesen & Co.
was dead.
Gosch and Davidsen quickly found together and the 8th of
January 1877 they changed the company into a partnership with
the name HE Gosch
& Co , Amager .
That autumn they knowledged that Anders Sørensen was going to
sell his factory in Frederiksberg and the 30th of
December they signed the agreement with Sørensen .
The company name
was H. E.
Gosch & Co , Copenhagen, where Phoenix brand was manufactured in
Amager and Tordenskjold in Frederiksberg.
The following year, they steady rebuilt and extended the factory
and in April 1882 they transformed the company into the limited
company HE
Gosch & Co. Tændstikfabrikker, Copenhagen, where the grocers,
Jacob Emil Michaelsen, Harry Levin and Anders Sørensen was going
to sit in the board .
Davidsen and
Gosch were presidents.
The share
capital was at 210,000 kroner.
To avoid a grueling competition Gosch and Davidson
gathered in 1883 with Ole Christian Green from Godthaab and
Ernst Carl Hoff from Randers Tændstikfabrik and agreed on
uniform prices .
And the development continued for all three companies and on the
Great Northern industrial exhibition in Copenhagen in 1888 all
had spectacular stands with their products.
At the end of 1888 Gosch began to mechanize their
production including
a box glue machine and when this was commissioned , they could
dismiss the 160 families who had hitherto made boxes at home.
In May 1896 Gosch came out for one of the few fires, they
were exposed to as it caught fire in a waste at the plant in
Frederiksberg , which ignited a part of the production building
and the machines that were in this .
As luck no one was injured in the fire and only 2 ½ months later
, production was restarted.
As Gosch became ill in 1898 , he had agreed with his son-in-law,
Folmer Preisler that this would resign his position at LF
Mørck & Co.
and go into the match stick business , initially as a traveler
in order to learn the business from the inside .
Gosch died the 16th of
March 1898 of
stomach cancer .
As one of the last actions he had initiated negotiations with
Godthaab to combine the two factories and in the summer of 1898
, negotiations were concluded with HE
Gosch & Co. taking over "Aktie Tændstikfabriken Godthaab" and
the new company was named the somewhat lengthy " Aktieselskabet
HE Gosch & co Tændstikfabrik and Aktietændstikfabrikken Godthaab
" .
The board was set with two people from each of the factories ,
in addition to Oscar Davidsen, who was still president.
At the same time Godthaab´s export company ,
Kjøbenhavns Actie Tændstikfabrik, which stood for exports
through RB
Green in Hamburg was closed and instead the Kjøbenhavns
Aktie Tændstikfabrik (with a "k" instead of "c)" , which now
took over this export was established.
In the fall of 1899 , they made another automizasing initial
investment , this time in a box filling machine, whereby the
workforce was reduced by 75 women , yielding much unrest among
employees.
On the 1st of
April 1900 Oscar Davidsen went of the Director and as new
directors Folmer Preisler and cand.
Eng .
Hjalmar Madsen
was elected.
At the same time the "Kjøbenhavns Aktie Tændstikfabrik" was
closed, since it ceased cooperation with RB
Green and now
even stood for exports.
By combining the two factories , problems arose due to the fact
that there were different wages, but even if workers was offered
a uniform salary of 12 crowns per hour strike occurred , since
for some meant a pay cut .
The strike lasted for six months , after which it was agreed .
In the beginning of 1901, there was in charge of Private Bank
President
Axel Heide an acquisition and a merger of P. Rohmell ,
Godthaabsvejs Tændstikfabrik , Tændstikfabriken Merkur and the
relatively newly Københavns Tændstikfabrik into the company "Københavns
Tændstikfabrikker og Aktietændstikfabrikken Merkur".
Within less than a year also Københavns Tændstikfabrik was
closed and the production was now delt into Nikolajvej in
Frederiksberg , Godthaab on Amager and Merkurin Randers.
In 1903 Gosch bought the shares in the company that had been created by
Axel Heide , which probably also was the original plan.
There was always a price war with the new factories , and when
it was believed that these wars was over, a new factory, Hellerup
Tændstikfabrik appeared and became the new competitor and
the price war continued .
In 1904 Gosch made another investment in automation , this
time almost the ultimate because they invested in 3 complete
machines that could take the raw sticks into one end and deliver
the finished swearing , waxed and dried sticks in the other and
transfer them to the
filling machines .
On the 1st of
September of that year Gosch and Godthaab announced that
they in the
future also operated under the name "De forenede danske
Tændstikfabrikker " , but not quite as the name sounded while
they still had
to fight with Hellerup Tændstikfabrik and the new match
factory "Tændstikfabrikken Glødefri" .
In October 1906 Gosch & Co. bought a 50,000 square
meter wide
fulfilled land at Islands Brygge , where they intended to build
a new factory and marge the production .
The
factory was completed in May 1908.
At the same time they began to be interested in abroad and
established a cooperation / purchase of Otto Miram in Kassel in
Germany and Cobbaert & Prove in Ninove in Belgium.
To be in charge of the latter there had been established a
special company "Københavns Export tændstikfabriK" ( KEK ) .
And in the same period appears also a new competitor in Denmark
, "Købmændenes Tændstikfabrik" in Skelskør , a factory
run by an association of merchants.
In order to cope with this new competition the three
"old" companies Gosch , Glødefri and Hellerup
established a joint sales
office , which also was agreed production quotas and price
policy.
The effect of this cooperation , and mismanagement in Skelskør was
that the "Købmændenes Tændstikfabrik" went bankrupt in 1910 , after which
the three factories bought whole factory and shared the machinery, etc.
between them.
The main body of the machines were sent to the factory in Ninove
.
In 1914, Folmer Preisler got the idea to take advantage of acquisition
of wood and established a pencil factory , Viking, which was
built on the northern part of the site in Islands Brygge .
Interest was high and production increased in the following
years .
During the
World War I not only problems with large imports of Swedish
matches appeared, but also a great interest among the Swedes to
take over
the Danish factories .
Jönköping, had some years ago made an agreement with Frantz Nehammer
to be in charge of the sale in Denmark and now got him to establish
a trading company Match Company who made large purchases of
shares respectively Glødefri and Hellerup and also began this
with Gosch .
There was a dramatic hidden battle in which the Swedes in
secret, with the Swedish match king Ivar Kreuger in the lead,
acquired all the shares in Glødefri and Hellerup and a very
large proportion of the shares in Gosch , so that they actually
already in 1918 had a majority shareholding.
In 1920, the match production in Randers was closed and
all production transferred to Copenhagen , and the buildings in
Randers was sold in 1921.
The Swedes took over more and more influence in Gosch so
Gosch had to pay "royalties " for the use of the Swedish patents, know how and capabilities for the procurement of raw
materials from Sweden , and amount of matches Gosch were allowed to produce .
In 1932 Ivar Kreuger made (reportedly ) suicide in Paris and
the entire Swedish trust was torn to pieces.
There was a long struggle about how the remains after him would
be distributed , but just when all thought that Gosch had been
taken over by the Americans ( it reached even an
American to be elected on the board ) , it was announced that Svenska
Tändstick AktieBolag ( STAB ) now with the Wallenberg-
family behind, had taken over Gosch .
During
World War II the lack of usable wood was significantly and to
guard against future problems Gosch bought the farm Hellestrup
, when they breeded aspe and
poplar trees, which would later be planted with forest owners and
later bought back as matchstick trees.
In 1955 the Monopoly Control was created and they cast their light
on the match industry where they could see that all the Danish
factories were owned by the Swedes.
This had
finally been completely public .
In the early 1960s, Swedes began to rationalize the Danish
factories , and in 1961 closed the production at the combined Hellerup
& Glødefri Tændstikfabrik and began to produce a series of
rationalization projects , "the Ideal factory" , etc. , which in some
projects also included Viking.
The rationalizations did not go as hoped , in some situations the various savings plans worked
against each other and profits
began to disappear.
At the same time the Swedes entirely controlled both purchase and
selling prices and Gosch was now only a branch of STAB .
In 1970 STAB tried to buy up the remaining 9 % shares in Gosch
and by the offer of a good share price outlet they now owned 97
to 98 % of the shares.
Although the factory in the last 5 years almost constantly had
reduced the workforce as a part of the rationalization plans ,
the
Swedes decided to close HE
Gosch & Co.
as a match factory 1st of July 1972.
Sales of Tordenskjold matches , however, continued through the
company Starmark .
