Ever since our foundation, DEBATIN has been all about innovative power, high quality, and groundbreaking products. But naturally our company has evolved over the course of the last century, while remaining bold, forward-looking, and always flexible.
In the early years, DEBATIN’s core business was processing, printing, and trading paper, and making paper bags of various shapes and sizes. New developments in technology and materials, social changes and evolving demand led to new product developments, additions to the product range, and a gradual shift in focus.
Throughout the century, DEBATIN has kept developing new specialist products, improving our portfolio and finding novel ways to use existing products.
1954 – Advertising mail sent out to flour mills
1976 – Debatin UNIHAFT poster for window displays
Competence in plastic film, printing, packaging
When DEBATIN extended its activities into the plastic film sector, with new products such as self-adhesive bags and document pouches for the Deutsche Bahn, we quickly earned ourselves a name as a specialist for packaging and plastic film – an evolution that we see reflected in the claims and brochures printed over the years.
Packed with ideas read the brochure in 1989, the year that DEBATIN’s UNIPACK® document pouches earned us the title of market leader in Europe, thanks in part to numbering the administrative departments of all Europe’s major postal and rail services among our customers.
Over the next years and decades, DEBATIN continued to hone its focus on solutions for tamper-evident shipping and logistics for valuable goods. Our DEBASAFE® Safebags (35 million produced for the Deutsche Bundesbank when the euro was introduced) and specially developed security closures and seals secured our position in this sector.
1983 – Debatin brochure – 60 years of new ideas
1989 – Debatin brochure – Packed with ideas
2006 – English Debatin brochure – About the company
Indeed, secure packaging has become steadily more important over the years, and it’s no surprise that when new safety regulations for air travel were introduced in 2006, DEBATIN was ready with a suitable product: the DEBA S.T.E.B.® security bags were ideal to meet the new regulations.
Safe. Perfect. Packed. And now: sustainable too
Ten years on, it was the DEBA S.T.E.B bags, made of recycled film, that became the first of DEBATIN’s products to bear the Blue Angel eco-label. By this time, sustainability had become firmly entrenched as an integral pillar of the corporate philosophy. In addition to developing newer, more sustainable materials and products, sustainability was being woven into our whole company ethos – and not just as mere lip service: for DEBATIN, it’s always been about “walking the talk”.
2014 – DEBATIN image brochure
DEBAMED® & DEBAYOURS® – Experience and flexibility as a foundation for creating new products
The acquisition of L.E.S.S. France in 2019 gave DEBATIN a solid footing for building up the DEBAMED® range and developing innovative products for safe and secure transport of medical and biological samples. Very successfully – in 2023, we won the German Packaging Award for our innovative product DEBAMED® Speci-Sorb.
As a specialist, solution partner and pioneer in the packaging sector, DEBATIN has been a byword for reliable transport and shipping solutions for the last 100 years. More recently, we’ve bundled these competences and our long experience into the DEBAYOURS® service, which is about developing customer-specific end-to-end solutions: economic, fully sustainable, and innovative. It’s this innovative way of thinking and acting that has set DEBATIN apart for a whole century. And this innovative spirit is recognised and appreciated outside our own company – in 2020 and 2023 DEBATIN featured on Germany’s TOP 100 list of most innovative businesses!
Oliver Tröber and Thomas Rose accept the German Packaging Award | Photo: dvi, Andreas Domma
2022 – DEBATIN image brochure
“To successfully come up with innovative solutions and transform them into reality, it’s essential to step off the beaten track, to rethink processes, methodologies and opportunities, to explore untrodden ground and carve out new routes to our goals. That’s the only way to create something truly new. And at DEBATIN, we have the experience and the skills to do just that!”
For more information about DEBATIN’s company history (including our slideshow, exhibition, and blog series “100 years of innovation”), click here:
