Lothar and Carsten Oleff, managing partners of Olho, applied to open insolvency proceedings for the group’s holding company (Löhne / Germany, www.olho-group.com), Olho-Technik Oleff und Holtmann, which is also based in Löhne (www.olho-technik.de), and Olho Sinsheim (Sinsheim / Germany). The court in Bielefeld has appointed Hans-Peter Burghardt from the law firm LTS (Herford / Germany; www.lts-rechtsanwaelte.com) as provisional administrator.

Together with the management he is looking for ways of keeping the group in business. Burghardt has instructed the consultancy Mentor (Trier / Germany; www.mentorag.de) to look for an investor.

Olho has nearly 1,600 employees at six sites in Germany, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Brazil. It develops and manufactures painted, lasered, printed, foil-backed and galvanised plastics components for automotive interiors. The group is regarded as a specialist for complex kinematic modules. Its production portfolio also includes sensors, mechatronic concepts and the “Skinform” two-component PUR process. In 2007 the group’s consolidated sales were around EUR 175m and sales had been expected to increase to EUR 180m in 2008. No information is available on whether this target was achieved.

The most recent investments were the acquisition of Utescheny Sinsheim – now Olho Sinsheim – and the Utescheny site in Zaisenhausen / Germany. At the same time it established sales and development offices in France and India. In 2006 Czech subsidiary Olho-Technik opened a site in Janovice nad Úhlavou, 50 km south of Plzen.