From the "waste" product to the world brand. The story of Aral begins in 1881 in Gelsenkirchen-Bulmke-Hueften (northeast of the Gelsenkirchen city center) in a coking plant. In the production there, in which coke is produced from coal using a dry distillation process, raw gas is produced as a by-product. However, this raw gas was not regarded as a "waste" product, but was processed into benzene, among other things. For example, 13 mining companies founded the "Westdeutsche Benzol Sales Association" in Bochum on November 28, 1898. In 1906, they joined forces with the "East German Benzol Sales Association" to form the "German Benzol Association". Thus the first logo was created from the crossed drums and iron of the mining in connection with the letter code DBV. In the next few years, the acronym BV for Benzol Verband developed due to various operational restructuring. The developments did not come to a halt, however, and in 1924 the BV designed and introduced a "petrol-benzene gas mixtu