The early years

The roots of Daiichi Sankyo Europe can be traced back to Luitpold-Werk, a pharmaceutical company founded on 22 January 1910 in Munich, Germany.

The Luitpold-Werk started its business activities with 10 employees in an office in Munich. The company enjoyed stable growth and moved several times before establishing its first factory on Munich’s Zielstattstrasse in 1928 – this is the same street where the European headquarters of Daiichi Sankyo is located today. By the time the factory had opened, the number of employees had increased to more than 100. Luitpold’s products consisted primarily of digestive enzymes in the early years and were shipped to about 50 countries around the world.

By 1942, the number of employees had risen to about 300, even though raw materials were hard to obtain and export was limited. In 1943, Munich was bombed, and the facilities on Zielstattstrasse were destroyed. Nevertheless, business activities were continued as far as was possible, and the individual departments moved to 10 temporary offices and laboratories across the city. As a result of these changes, the company decided to build new production facilities about 60 kilometres north of Munich in Pfaffenhofen.