Specialists of catalysts
We are the preferred partner for your catalyst needs, a first-rate employer and an active contributor to achieving the UN sustainable development goals.
In 1893 the family-owned company Van der Hoorn was founded in the city center of Utrecht. It was one of the first metal finishing companies in the country. In 1968 Van der Hoorn expanded and relocated to De Meern, the current location of IQatalyst.
One year later in 1969, Harshaw, an American company, acquired Van der Hoorn and build the first catalyst manufacturing plant, the Base Metal plant. The first catalyst was a silver catalyst for producing ethylene oxide. In 1988, Engelhard, also an American catalyst manufacturer, took over the site and made the location it’s European headquarter. The site and neighborhood flourished; where the site was first alone in the country site, slowly it became surrounded by other companies. In 1983 a high-tech R&D facility was constructed on the premises. Many new catalysts and other innovations were invented. Hundreds of patents were filed, and the R&D center is still one of the leading innovation facilities in the industrial catalysis field world-wide with a strong collaboration with the top universities in the Netherlands.
In 2001 the first Fischer Tropsch catalyst (FT) production plant was built. In 2006 BASF acquired Engelhard and the Fischer Tropsch catalyst capacity was expanded by construction of a second world class plant. The last decade, a large part of the site was modernized: a new warehouse, an on-site waste-water treatment plant, a dedicated DeNOx facility for the FT plants and many investments in the production plants to make it a state-of-the-art catalyst production facility. In 2023 ASC Investment bought the site from BASF and renamed it to IQatalyst – Innovative Quality Catalysts.