Three reds by the mysterious Austrian OEM

April 24, 2021

As a pen (and ink) afficinado that lives in Austria, it amazes me, that so many inks are made locally here, even though there is basically no high quality fountain pen and ink production by Austrian brands. There are cheap (and somewhat ugly in my opinion) "Jolly" branded school pens, and the quite nifty Jolly branded ink cartridges (they fit international standard on one end, Lamy on the other), but really nothing worth mentioning on this forum.

And then there ist the "mysterious Austrian OEM producer" that does at least ink for:

Montblanc
Kaweco
Monteverde (i am almost sure, I have thrown away the packaging though)
Online

and probably others. I suspect that this manufacturer ist basically the one company that in the last 30 years has consolidated all Austrian stationery producers(with brands JOLLY, SAX, Cretacolor and BIBA). Again the ink/fountain pen production was never worth mentioning, but the predecessors to that corporation had a centuries long tradition in producing pencils, and their pencils are still very good today (Jolly is a brand aimed at the school market, but their coloured pencils are very good, as are the "Cretacolor" branded artist pencils). I have no evidence to confirm that this is the producer of above OEM inks, would love to hear from anybody who knows more

In my much too large collection of inks there are several of these Austrian inks mentioned above, today I swabbed three reds, because I've just bought Kaweco Ruby Red (mainly because of the nice new bottle). Another, probably less known German brand is "Online", their red is called Ruby too, and I was wondering if it is the same, as I suspected could be the case with "Monteverde Valentine Red".

As you can see, Kaweco and Online/Monteverde are actually quite a bit different. Monteverde *might* be just a bit watered down Online ink or batch variation, or just an ever so slight variation.

I am actually surprised by Online Ruby being such a strong true red, without any hint of blueish or yellowish cast. Is Montblanc red still "Made in Austria", has anybody made comparisons to one of the inks mentioned above?

None of these inks is very cheap (don't know about Monteverde, it was expensive to me mainly because of shipping), most of them are quite saturated (as is e.g. Montblanc royal blue). Somehow I am phantasizing about sneaking into the Sachs&Brevillier factory building, discovering lots of ink secrets

Does anybody here have more information about that mysterious producer? Should I buy Montblanc Modena red to compare

I think the new Kaweco bottle (it is basically a jam or marmalade bottle with its twist off cap) is great BTW, it brings ink price somewhat down too. It is 50ml now, instead of 30ml before at the same price.

a nice weekend to all ink-afficionados,
Ralph

Edited April 24, 2021 by ausserirdischesindgesund
formatting

April 26, 2021

Monteverde makes their own inks.

Online and Kaweco are german companies, I think.

May 18, 2021

No one ever seems to find out where the ink is actually made. If we look at Rotring (Persian) Red / Kaweco Ruby Red, and Rotring (Carlsbad) Turquoise plus / Kaweco Paradise Blue -- we have two ink colors from two companies that are almost exactly the same. I've read various unsubstantiated comments that Kaweco and Rotring sourced FP inks from an unnamed Austrian company (Rotring until 1997 when they were swallowed by Sanford). Rotring made their own drawing ink for sure, but this leads to confusion and the assumption that they also made their own FP ink for all of their history. Pelican definitely made ink in Austria using their own Austrian plant. Pelican had a very close relationship with Rotring prior to 1997. At least one Rotring calligraphy set even came with Pelican ink. The 1996 envelope attached is from a Pelican division in Austria. it's a mystery -- and enquiring minds need to know.

https://fpgeeks.com/forum/showthread.php/28021-Ink-Manufacturers/page2 -- a related conversation with more unsubstantiated comments.