35 years of HOLBORN Hamburg: Following fossil fuel traces into the future

The year is 1988: In soccer, FC St. Pauli makes it into the 1st Bundesliga, Werder Bremen becomes German champion, and the Dutch win the European Cup. 1988 was also an eventful year in the mineral oil industry: on 1 February, leaded regular petrol became banned in Germany. On 10 March, a tank exploded at the Shell tank farm in Flörsheim, and on 6 July, the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea was destroyed by fire. But there was also good news: a new player entered the field in Hamburg with the HOLBORN Europa refinery. In January, the plant resumed production after almost a year of downtime.

At the end of 1988, the "Hamburger Abendblatt" newspaper reported that the HOLBORN refinery was "operating at full capacity" and that everything was "running like clockwork": It was a happy ending to a rollercoaster ride that began in 1953 with ESSO's takeover of the former Ebano asphalt works and reached its lowest point with the closure of the refinery in autumn 1986. A considerable number of jobs were lost, affecting a total of 450 men and women. A large number of former ESSO employees later found a new home at HOLBORN when the mothballed refinery was taken over by the US oil company Coastal.

And today? Over the past 35 years, HOLBORN has developed into an agile market player. Our fossil fuel roots have given rise to green projects that secure sustainable mobility and heating for the north of Germany. In our transition to a "green refinery", we impress with our energy efficiency and productivity and are breaking new ground to create and maintain secure, sustainable jobs.