In May 2025, ep-cm opened a new branch in Merseburg. For our company, this is more than another location: just a few kilometres away, at the Leuna works, the story that led to ep-cm began in 1977. Andrea Weingart interviewed my father Josef Angeli and me about it for Leuna-Echo Magazin. Here are the key milestones – in his words and mine.
1977: the first major project in Leuna
Josef Angeli came to what was then the GDR as an Austrian. In 1977, his employer, an Austrian group, carried out a major project at the refinery of the Leuna works.
“The project ran until 1978 – and I was happy to stay. In the years that followed, I looked after many projects in the former GDR, particularly in Leuna, Buna, Schwedt and Eisenhüttenstadt – up to reunification and beyond.” In 1986 he returned to Leuna and took over project management for the group’s activities across the entire Central German chemical triangle.
Before that, he had worked in Poland and in what was then Czechoslovakia. Leuna was a noticeable difference in working culture – and not only because of the shared language. What impressed him back then is still the standard for our work today:
“At the Leuna works I found a high level of occupational safety, quality awareness and commitment – very similar to the Austrian group I worked for at the time.”
After reunification: staying on
During the period of reunification, Josef Angeli proposed to his employer that it set up a new company. This became a subsidiary in Leipzig, which moved to Leuna in 1991 as an independent company and took over around 40 employees from the maintenance department of the Leuna refinery. In 1994 he played a leading role in an outsourcing project in which more than 450 employees of Leuna Raffinerie Gesellschaft were taken over – a milestone that secured the long-term success of this company. It still exists in a similar form today.
2005: founding ep-cm
After parting ways with his employer at the time, Josef Angeli founded ep-cm project management GmbH in 2005. “From the start, our aim was to work not only regionally but internationally as well.” In the years that followed, ep-cm delivered turnarounds and projects in Morocco, the USA, Canada, Qatar, Austria and Romania.
The second generation
I was born in Eisenhüttenstadt and saw large industrial plants as a child. Looking back, my path was probably mapped out: my first step into working life was an internship in Leuna, and later I worked on a turnaround – in the warehouse and directly in the plant. After studying law and business administration, I spent two years at our company in Los Angeles from 2010, followed by a year in Morocco in 2012. That is where the foundation for my current understanding of turnaround and project management was laid. In 2013 I joined the management team.
I still ask myself whether my father planned it that way. It was the best decision I could have imagined. What I particularly value in him is his openness to change and his courage to take calculated risks in the interest of the company – without ever losing sight of the social side.
That is exactly what makes us strong as a family business: foresight, responsibility and respect for employees and customers.
What ep-cm does today
We are a specialist service provider for turnarounds and capital projects in industrial process plants. Our focus is on the planning and execution coordination of plant shutdowns and on project control for major projects. We support our customers either as an advisory partner or by taking on defined service packages – always with the aim of safe, efficient and on-schedule delivery.
There are two further areas. With the TAR-Check we analyse how capable a turnaround organisation is today, show where it can improve and support the implementation. And through Staffing we provide specialists for turnaround and project organisations – exactly where the customer lacks capacity of its own.
Why Central Europe
For many years we worked internationally, including in the USA, Canada, North Africa and the Middle East – with time differences of up to ten hours. That often made day-to-day collaboration challenging. As a comparatively small company, we therefore made a deliberate decision to concentrate our work on Central Europe. Here the distances are shorter, the time zones almost the same and the way of working is closer to ours. That makes us faster and more reliable – and the results for our customers better.
Why Merseburg
We have been active in the Central German chemical triangle for many years, and we have long-standing relationships of trust with many plant operators there. The office in Merseburg was therefore the logical next step: it brings us closer to our customers and gives our growing team in the region a permanent base. Around 20 experienced specialists already work from here. The goal is a strong turnaround and project team for the whole region.
For my father, Merseburg is also a homecoming:
“Opening our branch in Merseburg feels like a homecoming to me – back to my professional roots in the chemical triangle of Central Germany. And it is moving that people from that time still recognise me today.”
He still feels deeply connected to this industrial and cultural landscape, to its people as much as to the region. This is where he not only worked but also started his family, and many friendships from that time continue to this day.
Specialists we train ourselves
Finding the right specialists is a real challenge in our field. There is no classic vocational training for what we do. That is why we founded the ep-cm Academy in 2015. Since then we have trained more than 80 employees there, mainly in turnaround planning, scheduling, cost control and project control. In our training rooms in Gelsenkirchen, three to five participants learn together.
We are looking above all for experienced practitioners – site managers, foremen, rigging supervisors or technicians with a good technical understanding – who want to develop and take on new tasks: in project control, turnaround management and digital working methods. For our on-site turnaround teams in particular, we are looking for people who are ready to swap the spanner for the laptop. If that sounds like you, you can get in touch with us at any time.
My father puts it like this: “For us, the satisfaction of our employees is the top priority. We are a real family business – and you notice that in everyday work, too.” This combination of respect, closeness and reliability is one reason why our staff turnover has been very low for years.
This article and its photos are based on the interview “Von Leuna in die Welt und zurück ins Herz des Chemiedreiecks” (From Leuna into the world and back to the heart of the chemical triangle) by Andrea Weingart in Leuna-Echo Magazin, July 2025 issue, published online in Leuna-Echo on 17 September 2025.