Océ 3.4

Océ, a Canon company, is a Netherlands-based company that develops, manufactures and sells printing and copying hardware and related software. The offering includes office printing and copying systems; production printers and wide format printing systems for both technical documentation and color display graphics. The company was founded in 1877. With headquarters in Venlo, the Netherlands, Océ is active in over 100 countries and employs more than 20,000 people worldwide.The company has research and development and production facilities in the Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, Germany, France, Japan, the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary and the United States.In 2010 Océ was acquired by Canon Inc. of Japan.HistoryFoundingOcé started in 1877 as a family business manufacturing machines for coloring butter and margarine. The company’s founder, chemist Lodewijk van der Grinten, supplied this coloring to farmers and then this was supplied to the margarine factories of Jurgens and Van den Bergh. In 1930, the margarine factories of Jurgens and Van den Bergh and the English Lever Brothers merged to become Unilever. From 1877 to 1972, Unilever used only the coloring produced by the Venlo factory in its margarine.In 1919 the grandson of Lodewijk, Louis van der Grinten, became interested in the blueprint process used for producing wide-format technical drawings. At that time, blueprint paper was extremely light-sensitive, and had a very short shelf life. Louis invented a coating that made blueprint paper last up to a year. This is considered the company’s first step into providing document solutions.