Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 20 Rhone Poulanc

  At some point Ilford was not interested in being involved with the aluminum plates.  Mr. Halpern arranged for Rhone Polunec, the leading French chemical company to purchase the Ilford shares.  To represent Rhone Poulanc they chose Mr. Piani who was the president of their cellophane division.  Mr. Halpern appointed Mr. Piani  and another man to  be Polychrome directors.  As the sales of the plates acceded the capacity of the former furniture factory plant, Polychromre Gmbh acquired a  former mushroom producing buildings in a suburb of Osterode, Katzenstein.  Because my wife Kay had brain surgery,  I could not stay in Osterode for enough time, therefore Simon Chu was put in charge of the  European operations.  

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 19 Polychrome GmbH

When we started to make the aluminum plates, we found there was not a sufficient flow of water.  Apparently the pipes were corroded.  We installed two 500 gallon tanks which were filled at night to have enough water to run the tanks line rinses.  Mr. Halpern hired a man in America from Germany to be the president of Poychrome Gmbh .  After a number of months we found the sales manager which Polychrome Gmbh  had hired was keeping some of the money the dealers paid and he was discharged.  A Mr, Richter was hired as the plant manager and Mr. Mintel as the company chemist.  

Polychrome Gmbh acquired an empty building In downtown Osterode which had been a furniture factory.  The  company then made the offset plates there and left Freiheiit.  I do not know if the tank line was moved there but they  built a copy of our C line.  Most of the line was built by Deprieux  which had experience building metal plate lines.  The anodizing section was obtained from Langbein.  We bought  from Deprieux two position unwind stands and heat seal units which enabled us to connect a finished roll of aluminum to a new one using a special two sided tape made by 3M.                 

Dr. Ken Kuhn

Dr. Ken Kuhn appeared to Polychrome suddenly in 1979 soon after the DIC takeover  as the head of research laboratory but without any background in graphic arts industry.          His effort was centered around organizing thick reports on every projects we had.          Since Polychrome laboratory had been more focused on results rather than writing reports, I must admit our record keeping was less than ideal.      So we reluctantly (perhaps) started to prepare thick reports which he brought to the management meetings to show the "progress".           But the combination of his lack of understanding of our business and his interest in following rigid structure made him not the most liked R&D director in our history.        Since I was still the Assistant Research Director I had an opportunity to hear his view of our staff and his interest in getting rid of one particular senior person who made considerable contribution to Polychrome but simply showed his dislike of Dr. K.           Possibly as the result of my complaint to Mr. Iwata of DIC, Dr. K was abruptly dismissed right in the middle of DRUPA in Dusseldorf when Mr. Kawamura came to meet us on the boat hotel we rented for the duration of the show.
Clearly Dr. K was a successful businessman judging from his bio    HERE  but we were simply not ready for the "big company" operation he (and Joe Piot) tried to bring in.