German, C.Scheibler & Co. Seal, Cologne, Image & Found by MTC Cocoon Wim.
Found in the Oudenaarde region, East Flanders, Belgium, 18mm, 6.8g.
KOLN / A/(M REIN), C.SCHEIBLER UND Co around // five-pointed star with arms separated from centre with STERN to left and THOMAS / SCHL(ACKE) below, GARANTIERT RE(IN)E GEM(AHLENE) around
From Wim, "Yet another German fertilizer seal ... diameter 18 mm and weight 6,8 gram ... the complete edge lettering should be:-
'GARANTIERT REINE GEMAHLENE THOMASSCHLACKE' on the left side of the figure of a star is written 'STERN' 'G. SCHEIBLER UND Co' 'KOLN AM REIN'
This fertiliser contains a lot of lime and is a residual product from the blast furnaces of the steel industry in the first half 20th century".
See Heimat und Geschichtverein Nörvenich, "Carl Johann Heinrich Scheibler (born June 19, 1852 in Krefeld, † December 12, 1920 in Cologne) was a German fertilizer manufacturer. Born as the son of the raw silk wholesaler Carl Ludwig Aurel Scheibler (1823–1905) and Anna Wilhelmine Kaibel (1827–1858), as well as the grandson of the velvet and silk manufacturer Johann Heinrich Scheibler, the builder of the family's ancestral home, the Red House, in Monschau.
After finishing school in Krefeld and Lyon, he also began training in the textile and clothing industry. After economic difficulties arose in his relative's silk factory, Scheibler changed in 1878 as authorized signatory and head of the fertilizer department at the “Chemische Fabrik Vorster & Grüneberg Cöln” in Kalk.
There Scheibler developed the inexpensive fertilizer Thomas phosphate, which was based on Thomas slag. Since Thomas slag was a waste or by-product of the Thomas Gilchrist process in steel production and was extremely inexpensive for the time, this product also enabled poorer farmers to fertilize their fields.
The Thomas process is a so-called blowing or wind freshening process in which air is blown into the liquid pig iron through the bottom nozzles of the converter. The Thomas pear was lined with a basic dolomite stone or dolomite tar mixture and was particularly suitable for processing iron rich in phosphorus. The phosphorus oxidized to phosphorus pentoxide was slagged with the limestone added as an additive (Thomas slag) and was marketed finely ground under the name Thomas flour as a phosphate fertilizer.
Scheibler began to buy large quantities of slag and built his own slag mill for the production of Thomas flour. In 1885 he founded the company “C. Scheibler & Co, which was initially spun off as a subsidiary of the company "Vorster & Grüneberg". Three years later, in 1888, he founded the sales company "Rheinisch-Westfälische Thomasphosphat-Fabriken AG".
Up until the First World War, the company held shares in fertilizer factories in Germany, the Benelux countries, France and Russia and expanded its product range to include superphosphate and synthetic nitrogen.
In 1902 Scheibler merged his successful company again with the company “Vorster & Grüneberg”, which was converted into a GmbH in 1892 and renamed “Chemische Fabrik Kalk”, and from then on was taken over as a shareholder entitled to inheritance. His son Hans Carl Scheibler (1887–1963) joined the Kalk Chemical Factory in 1906 after completing his training and, after his father's death in 1920, also took over the management of the fertilizer division. In 1930 this Hans Carl Scheibler also gave its name to the mineral fertilizer developed after extensive research and included in the program with the brand name “Scheiblers Kampdünger”, where “Kamp” stood for “Lime-Ammonia-Phosphorus”.
Since the steel industry now processes almost exclusively low-phosphate ores, the inexpensive Thomas flour has practically disappeared from the market. The contamination of Thomas flour with the heavy metal chromium is also problematic."