1928, the year of the first telephone line linking up Paris to New York, also saw the foundation of C.E.C.A. in France.
C.E.C.A. was an upshot of the diversification strategy of the Belgian Group EMPAIN in France. Its founder Edouard EMPAIN (1852-1929) was a Belgian engineer, a geologist by training, and the son of a schoolmaster. He founded one of the industrial dynasties of the 20th century.
In 1907 he was granted the title of Baron by King Leopold II for services rendered in particular in the Belgian Congo and in Egypt. He died one year after the creation of C.E.C.A. and was buried in the city he helped excavate in Egypt, the modern Heliopolis.
Beside his activities outside Europe, from 1881 to 1900 Edouard established and acquired a large number of rail companies in France and in Belgium. The crowning of this activity came in 1900 when he was granted the operation of the Compagnie du Métropolitain de Paris which the group was to retain until its nationalisation in 1946.
From 1919, the EMPAIN Group turned its attention to the search for oil and natural gas in France, hence the creation of S.R.E.P. (Société de Recherches et d'Exploitations Pétrolifères). In 1922 S.R.E.P. began laboratory research to develop activated carbon that could be used in the gasoline stripping of natural gas, a resource exploited by the group.
Following laboratory and pilot plant development, the group succeeded in manufacturing the first tonnes of activated carbon, and the Acticarbone® trademark was registered… So began the adventure of C.E.C.A.
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