Emtec

Background

EMTEC's roots trace to the 1930s, when high-quality magnetic tape was developed at I.G. Farben's Ludwigshafen plant. After World War II, I.G. Farben was broken up, and the Ludwigshafen plant became part of BASF. In 1990, BASF acquired AGFA's magnetic tape business, and in 1991 BASF Magnetics was spun off as an independent company still wholly owned by BASF. The company was sold to KOHAP, Ltd., a Korean textile firm, in 1997 and renamed EMTEC Magnetics.

Between 1998 and 2002, all of BASF's cassette lineup—Ferro Extra, Chrome Extra, Chrome Super, and the budget tapes Sound 1 and Sound 2—were rebranded as EMTEC. KOHAP sold EMTEC to Legal & General Ventures Ltd. in 2002 due to the Asian financial crisis. In 2003, EMTEC Magnetics GmbH filed for bankruptcy protection in Germany, and later that year Imation acquired certain data storage assets for approximately US$15 million. In 2004, MPO France acquired certain assets of EMTEC Consumer Media GmbH, including rights to the EMTEC trade name, and specialized equipment from EMTEC's Willstätt and Munich plants was liquidated at auction.

The Dexxon Group acquired EMTEC in May 2006. Cassette manufacture ceased in 2005, and reel-to-reel tape operations were sold to RMGI, but EMTEC continues to manufacture optical discs, memory cards, and USB flash drives. In 2011, EMTEC began creating flash drives shaped like rubber animals, such as a penguin, turtle, rabbit, chicken, clownfish, and dolphin.