Schott AG

Company founder and namesake Otto Schott

The glass technical laboratory founded in Jena in 1884

In 1884, Otto Schott, Ernst Abbe, Carl Zeiss and his son Roderich Zeiss founded the Glastechnische Laboratorium Schott & Genossen (Glass Technical Laboratory Schott & Associates) in Jena,[2][3] which initially produced optical glasses for microscopes and telescopes.[4] In 1891, the Carl Zeiss Foundation founded two years earlier by Ernst Abbe became a partner in the glass laboratory.[5] Jena glass, and early borosilicate glass, was one of its early manufactured products.[6] The invention of borosilicate glass, resistant to chemicals, heat and temperature change, paved the way for new technical glasses for thermometers, laboratory equipment and gas lamps.

Products of Jenaer Glaswerks Schott & Gen at an exhibition in 1951.

The company experienced economic success. The workforce had grown to 1,233 by 1919.[7] Sales had doubled to 28 million marks by 1920. Otto Schott transferred his shares to the Carl Zeiss Foundation in 1919, fully rendering the glass laboratory a foundation company and renaming it Jenaer Glaswerk Schott & Gen (Jena Glassworks Schott & Assoc.).[8][9] Erich Schott, the founder’s son, took over management of the glass factory in 1927.

In the midst of Germany’s political division after World War II, the Jena factory was expropriated transformed into a state-owned entity in 1948. The company was divided in half: VEB Jenaer Glaswerk in Jena in East Germany, later integrated into the VEB Carl Zeiss Jena collective, and Jenaer Glaswerk Schott & Gen in Mainz in West Germany.[7] While the state-owned company in Jena developed into one of the most important specialty glass suppliers in Eastern Europe, Erich Schott developed an international group in Mainz with sales offices in Europe, the US and Asia.[10] The company became a specialist glass manufacturer with products including glass components for television tubes, fiber optics for light and image conductors, mirror substrates for giant telescopes, glass-ceramic cooktop panels (serial production from 1973) and glass tubes for parabolic trough power plants. Following the German reunification, the Mainz plant assumed Jena’s company shares.[10]

The company experienced growth in the first decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Schott Glas, as it became known in 1998, developed into a technology group with 80 companies in 32 countries and global sales of over 3 billion Deutschmark. Schott had been operating at only 40 sites in ten countries with global sales of DM 1.31 billion in 1984. In 2004, Schott Glas converted from a dependent enterprise of its sister enterprise Carl Zeiss (Oberkochen) to become a legally independent Aktiengesellschaft—Schott AG.[11] The Carl Zeiss Foundation remains the sole shareholder of Schott AG. The Foundation Statute does not permit to sell its shares, ruling out the prospect of an IPO.

The technology group entered the solar industry in 2001, founding Schott Solar GmbH in 2005 (renamed Schott Solar AG in 2008). In 2008, Schott announced that it planned to produce crystalline photovoltaic cells and modules with a total of 450 MW annually. It also planned to produce thin-film PV wafers with a capacity of 100 MW.[12][13] In 2009, the company inaugurated a US$100 million solar manufacturing facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA to build solar receivers for concentrated solar thermal power plants (CSP) and 64 MW of photovoltaic modules. They had already been making 15 MW of photovoltaics annually in Billerica, Massachusetts, until the factory was closed in 2009.[14] The company was also engaged in concentrated solar power technology, by manufacturing solar receiver tubes. In June 2012, Schott announced that its Albuquerque plant would close down, laying off all photovoltaic cell manufacturing employees immediately and ramping down the remaining employees over the rest of the summer.[15] Schott withdrew from its solar business in 2012 and Schott Solar AG was dissolved.