 In 1898 Oscar Englebert, who till then had worked with rubberised coatings and mats, set up a tyre factory in Belgium, manufacturing pneumatic tyres for bicycles and automobiles, and by 1912 the business employed 400 people.By 1926 the workforce had grown to 3,500 and was one of Europe's top five rubber manufacturing businesses.In 1929, Englebert set up a second tyre plant just across the border at Aachen in Germany.