VEKA Brand Guidelines: The Sendenhorst PVC Profile Maker Heinrich Laumann Took Over in 1969

Two founders’ initials, one buyer in 1969.

VEKA takes its name from two men who never ran it. German Wikipedia says the idea came from Ewald Venhues, a joiner in Sendenhorst, Westphalia, who from 1966 prepared to make roller-shutter profiles in plastic and brought in the plastics specialist Bernhard Kaup; the planned firm, VEKAPLAST, combined the first letters of their surnames. Venhues opened a production site in 1968 but did not obtain a licence to make the shutter profiles.

In April 1969, according to the Laumann Group’s own history, Heinrich Laumann met Venhues, who was looking for a buyer for the plastics production; a few days later Laumann took over the business and its eight employees. German Wikipedia describes Laumann as a trading partner of Venhues and sales manager at the timber wholesaler Grotemeyer, and says he carried out the formal founding of Vekaplast. The company dates itself from 1969; English Wikipedia dates Vekaplast’s start, as a roller-shutter maker, to 1967.

Laumann bet on PVC windows, at the time, German Wikipedia says, a minor product that was still technically unrefined. Vekaplast brought out its own window profile system, called “Basis,” two years later, and then added front-door and sliding-door systems. In 1974 it moved to an 11.5-hectare site in the Schörmel industrial area of Sendenhorst, still its headquarters. The company says the new plant there was inaugurated in 1977 with more than 1,000 guests, and that a mixing plant for PVC compounds went into operation in 1981.

Subsidiaries abroad and a family AG.

Internationalisation began in 1983. German Wikipedia says subsidiaries followed in Spain, the United States, France and the United Kingdom, and the company says VEKA Inc. in the United States and VEKA plc in the UK started production in 1986, with a French plant opening at Thonon-les-Bains in 1987. In 1985 a separate division for PVC sheet was set up under the name Vekaplan. English Wikipedia adds later North American sites, among them VEKA West in Reno, Nevada, in 1993, the Canadian extruder Berlinex, bought in 2002, and VEKA South in Terrell, Texas, in 2006. In Europe, the company says VEKA Polska was founded in 1994, and English Wikipedia says the British business won the Large Business category of the Lancashire Red Rose Awards in 2017, as well as an employer-of-the-year award from Burnley Business.

The legal form changed twice: Vekaplast became VEKA GmbH in 1990 and VEKA AG in 1992. German Wikipedia says the shares remain wholly owned by the Laumann and Hartleif families. Laumann moved from the management board to chair the supervisory board in 2000, and Hubert Hecker led the board after him. Laumann’s daughter and son-in-law, Elke and Andreas Hartleif, joined in 1996 and reached the board in 1997; Andreas Hartleif took the chair in 2007, the Westfälische Nachrichten reported in November 2026, drawing on a company statement. The same report said their son Lukas joined in February 2026, the third generation in the business. In November 2025 the couple received the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award in the family-business category, the company says.

Recycling entered the story early. In 1993 VEKA opened a plant for recycling old PVC windows, doors and shutters at Behringen in Thuringia, run by VEKA Umwelttechnik, which German Wikipedia calls the largest of its kind in Europe; further recycling plants followed in France in 2006 and England in 2007. The company names them as Vendeuvre-sur-Barse in Champagne and Wellingborough, near Northampton.

Profiles, plants and owners.

Window, door and façade system makers rarely sell a finished window to a homeowner. Most of them design and produce the profiles, in PVC or aluminium, that independent fabricators cut, assemble and glaze, and that installers then fit. Their identities are shaped by that chain: the companies speak first to fabricators and architects, and only then to the people who will live behind the glass.

Two kinds of picture recur in how these companies present themselves. One is the profile cross-section, a technical drawing of the frame’s chambers, gaskets and reinforcement, published in system brochures and on product pages. The other is building photography: houses, flats and offices shown with the finished windows and doors in place, often in a range of colours and woodgrain finishes. Between the two sit the swatches, since surface choices such as foils, lacquered finishes and aluminium cover shells have become a large part of what is offered.

Naming tends to be systematic. Ranges are grouped into systems and series, and the name often carries a number tied to a dimension: VEKA, for example, explains that its SOFTLINE 82 profile measures 82 mm in depth. Behind the public pages, many makers run separate areas for professional partners, such as fabricator sections, training seminars and technical downloads, alongside the consumer-facing site.

Corporate pages tell a further story about plants and owners. Makers in this group publish histories that trace small workshops into international groups, list their extrusion and recycling sites, and, where shares are listed, maintain investor pages with shareholder notices. This guide sets out what those pages and independent dated sources say about each brand, and marks what rests on the company’s own word.

Numbers that name the profile depth.

VEKA sells profile systems rather than finished windows. German Wikipedia says its window profiles go only to specialist fabricators, and its sheets to further processors such as display and exhibition builders. Its German site names the window systems by series and depth: SOFTLINE 70, 76 and 82, where the number is the profile depth in millimetres, so that SOFTLINE 82 measures 82 mm in cross-section, the company explains. Lift-and-slide doors come under VEKAMOTION 82, with a MAX design variant for larger areas of glass. Beyond white, the company offers foils in more than 60 colours and woodgrains, aluminium cover shells and VEKA SPECTRAL, an in-house ultra-matt lacquered surface that German Wikipedia says was presented at the Fensterbau Frontale trade fair in 2016 and that the company now offers in 14 shades and woodgrains. In the United States the group also makes decking, railing and fencing, German Wikipedia says.

The group has also grown by acquisition. VEKA announced the takeover of its rival Gealan, of Oberkotzau in Franconia, in 2014. The Laumann Group, named after the founder and since 2024 the umbrella for all its subsidiaries, says it now spans VEKA and Gealan PVC profiles, aluminium systems, PVC sheet, surface technology and IT services. The Westfälische Nachrichten listed the aluminium systems maker Procural among the acquisitions and said the British building-products group Epwin was taken over in 2025; the Laumann Group says Epwin has been part of its portfolio since 2025.

For a design guide, VEKA shows how a profile maker can turn a technical measurement into a naming system that fabricators and architects read in the same way. Compare Rehau, another family-owned polymer group founded in Germany, and Deceuninck, the Belgian PVC profile maker. For this guide we use anthracite, profile white, a moss green and a clay red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep VEKA’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.