The specialist printing house commemorated 180 years of company history on 6 September 2012 with a summer party for current and former employees with their families at its headquarters in Schwerte. Founded in Dortmund-Hörde in 1832, the family business has had to "reinvent" itself as it were during each of the 5 generations that have run it so far. It all began as a "printing house for all office necessities" with an affiliated newspaper publishing company. At the beginning of the 20th century, the company realized that diagram paper for metrological applications – for the local mining industry initially – could be a promising specialization for the future. These superior precision papers gave the company its name, which has been retained for reasons of traditional and historical preference, in spite of the fact that technical diagram papers only account for a small proportion of the company's business today. Diagramm Halbach became a pioneer in the field of continuous printing with the advent of automated data processing, a role that the company continued to play until this line of business declined during the 1990s. After 135 years on Dortmund soil, the company moved to newly built premises on a green-field site in the Villigst industrial park in 1967. It was not long before Ulrich Halbach, the current senior partner, established a third pillar of business that focused on the health care market. The multifarious spectrum of consumable materials for medical engineering applications supplied today goes way beyond the company's own print products, such as medical register paper and preprinted hospital documents. Almost 70 % of sales make their way from Schwerte to hospitals, doctors' surgeries, collaborative laboratories, emergency medical services and pharmaceutical companies. Apart from this, Diagramm Halbach is also active in the fields of tickets, car park and event tickets, special self-adhesive labels, chip cards for access systems and print products made from thermal paper. The thermal papers purchased all over the world constitute the most important raw material in the company today. The company has made a special name for itself in complex data acquisition solutions revolving around the "digital pen". This is a ballpoint pen with integrated camera and processor which, used in conjunction with a kind of invisibly printed "digital paper" so to speak, captures hand-written text, stores it and and transfers it to a database within a matter of seconds. The company not only employs printers and media designers to serve this niche market, but also computer scientists and IT experts. Diagramm Halbach sees the future in a constant stream of new additions to the product portfolio, particularly in the field of security applications. In its capacity as one of the few certified security printing houses in Germany, the company is very much concerned with the unforgeability of tickets that have a monetary value and patient security solutions in the health care sector. Diagramm Halbach employs 220 people at its main production facility in Schwerte. With other subsidiaries in Germany, Holland and Turkey, the Group employs a total of around 300 people. Its products are supplied to almost 70 countries and exports account for more than 30 % of its business. The business policy of the tradition-steeped family business Diagramm Halbach includes focusing on investments and improvements that reduce environmental impact; one example being the decision in favour of photovoltaic power plants on the two production buildings in Schwerte and Herne. The Halbach Group generates a total of more than 280,000 kWh of clean solar energy every year. A recent development is the ability to manufacture "climate-neutral" print products, whereby the CO2 emissions produced during the manufacturing process are determined and compensated by purchasing certificates to support ecologically acknowledged climate protection projects. The company has been in the throes of a generation change for some time now. The sixth generation of the family is now managing the company in the person of Philipp Halbach. Thomas Halbach, who is currently holding the position of technical manager at the production facility in Herne, will be joining the technical management of the company in the years to come.