Joint activities, meetings, discussions, reliable support in difficult situations – all of this promotes a sense of community and thus cohesion amongst the people around us. This is why we support a variety of associations. In keeping with our aforementioned commitment, two collaborative partners, Lohne Industrial Museum and Lohne Youth Club, have a special significance for us – and this has something to do with our company’s history.

The development of our company, which Josef Pöppelmann and his brother established in a chicken coop in 1949, marks a chapter in the region's industrial history. As an establishment dedicated to this area of research, Lohne Industrial Museum lies very close to our hearts. In 1997, former managing directors Gertrud Pöppelmann and Karl-Heinz Diekmann provided the decisive impulse for the construction of Lohne Industrial Museum. Since its opening in 1987, it had been housed in a small building that used to be a carpentry workshop.

When Gertrud Pöppelmann and Karl-Heinz Diekmann left their operational management posts in 1997, they declared that they would assume the construction financing for the long-planned industrial museum. In 2000, the museum opened in its new home opposite Lohne train station. Since then, we have closely accompanied the development of the museum into one of the region’s most important cultural hubs. To commemorate the industrial history of the Oldenburger Münsterland, it keeps alive the memory of the beginnings of the region’s business life and the work of the people who made it all possible. In November 2018, we collaborated with the museum team to organise the 1st Pöppelmann Researchers’ Sunday in the museum. With more than 1,000 visitors, the event served as a platform for dialogue on the subject of plastic, and met with a huge response from the public. We plan to continue with this type of collaboration in the future.

The great importance Pöppelmann attaches to social commitment and supporting those in need is reflected by decades of support for Lohne Youth Club. In 1990, Gertrud Pöppelmann gifted the town of Lohne with the “Alte Fabrik” – the Pöppelmanns’ former home and headquarters of the family business in Bakumer Straße – for youth work, completely free of charge. To this day, the building remains a central meeting place for children and young people in Lohne, whether for meaningful leisure activities or support in social emergencies. Pöppelmann continues to be part of the network of supporters for the institution, which was described in a publication by Lohne Historical Society as an expression of “social conscience in Lohne”. An example of the work is the youth project “Children Need Family”, which provides children with various types of support including an educational lunch club, help with homework and leisure activities, and also offers advice and assistance to families concerning bureaucratic procedures and medical appointments. The youth club also offers regular holiday care facilities, and Pöppelmann employees who wish to use it receive a subsidy from the company.