Stollwerck

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Stollwerck GmbH

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1839
Seat Norderstedt , Germany
management
  • Jean Marie van Logtestijn, managing director
Number of employees about 1000
sales approx. € 500 million
Branch Confectionery industry
Website www.stollwerck.de

Draft packaging for colonial chocolate, around 1890
Stollwerck advertisement 1896
Preference share of the Stollwerck brothers AG dated July 17, 1902 for more than 1,000 marks
Former Stollwerck factory in Cologne: The wheel room of the cooling compressors preserved as an industrial monument
Guest workers at Stollwerck, 1962

The Stollwerck GmbH is a German food company based in Norderstedt (formerly Cologne ) generated by the production of chocolate was known. Stollwerck belonged to Barry Callebaut AG from 2002 to 2011 . In October 2011 Stollwerck was sold to the Belgian group of companies Baronie .

history

In 1839 Franz Stollwerck opened a plant for cough drop production in Cologne, which had a breakthrough after only two years. In 1860 production was expanded to include chocolate , marzipan and Printen .

After Franz Stollwerck's death in 1876, his five sons took over management of the company. Albert Nikolaus (born November 28, 1840 in Cologne, † April 4, 1883 in Jerusalem), Peter-Joseph (born March 22, 1842 in Cologne, † March 17, 1906 in Bonn), Heinrich (born October 27, 1843 in Cologne ; † May 9, 1915 in Cologne), Ludwig (born January 22, 1857 in Cologne; † March 12, 1922 in Cologne) and Carl (born November 6, 1859 in Cologne; † October 3, 1932 in Feldkirchen) built the company until 1902 to a globally operating stock corporation with plants in Europe and America.

In 1871 the company Gebr. Stollwerck was founded, which promoted the industrialization of chocolate production. The second youngest of the brothers, Ludwig Stollwerck , in particular , was open to technical developments. In 1887 Stollwerck set up the first vending machines ; In 1893 there were 15,000 machines selling chocolate. In the USA , in 1894, Stollwerck founded the company Volkmann, Stollwerck & Co. with the German businessman John Volkmann , which set up a factory for Stollwerck machines in New York . At the beginning of the 1890s there were over 4,000 of their machines in New York train stations alone. By converting it into a stock corporation (Gebr. Stollwerck A. G.) , the capital was raised in 1902 in order to be able to continue growing.

At the turn of the century, branches in Berlin , Wroclaw , Bremen , Frankfurt , Leipzig , Munich , Amsterdam , Brussels , Budapest , Chicago and Vienna as well as factories in Berlin, Pressburg (now Bratislava ), London and New York had already sprung up in Germany and abroad . Stollwerck also took over other established brands such as Dr. Michaelis' Eichel-Cacao and advertised with the position as purveyor to the court as well as with the won international awards ("27 court diplomas, 70 gold medals").

In addition to the export business, the company founded further subsidiaries in Belgium and Austria-Hungary. Stollwerck was also a leader in the cinematograph business that began in 1895 . Only the First World War , which began in 1914, ended the rapid rise of the Stollwercks. Karl Stollwerck built the Stollwerck mausoleum in Upper Bavaria in 1927 . In 1928 the Hamburg factory of the Kakao Compagnie Theodor Reichhardt was taken over for 10 million Reichsmarks and its operations were relocated to Cologne.

Due to the global economic crisis in 1930, the Second World War and the associated damage to factories in Germany, expropriations abroad and various bad investments, Stollwerck got into financial difficulties. Deutsche Bank carried out a tough restructuring under the direction of bank directors Georg Solmssen and Karl Kimmich, in the course of which almost all members of the Stollwerck family were forced out of the company. "With the renovation, he created an ideal, almost terrifying example of bank control over a company," it said in the specialist literature on Kimmich. The measures taken by the renovators were not very successful, in the end they were named “Loser of the Year” by Capital magazine in 1970.

The takeover of the company for a symbolic price by Hans Imhoff in 1972 brought Stollwerck back to a knowledgeable and qualified leadership in the chocolate market. Over the next 30 years, Stollwerck became one of the largest chocolate manufacturers with plants at home and abroad and took over traditional brands such as Sprengel , Sarotti and the Jacques chocolaterie in Eupen . The concentration of production meant that the traditional Cologne plant in the Severinsviertel was given up in the mid-1970s. This also contributed 10 million marks in funding from the city of Cologne and a sales price of 25 million DM for the company premises. In 1980 a squatting took place in the former production facility in the southern part of Cologne.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall , Stollwerck became the first chocolate manufacturer in the new federal states and took over Thüringer Schokoladewerk GmbH in Saalfeld, which, with the Rotstern brand, was the largest chocolate factory in the GDR . In Hungary, the company became the market leader in the chocolate market after opening a factory in Székesfehérvár in 1995. Stollwerck is equally successful in Poland and Russia.

In 1993 Imhoff had the Imhoff-Stollwerck Chocolate Museum built in Cologne's Rheinauhafen for 53 million  DM , in which many objects from the Stollwerck history were exhibited, which Imhoff had already inspired in his childhood. In 2002 Imhoff sold the group to Barry Callebaut AG , the world's largest cocoa and chocolate manufacturer, which is majority owned by the Jacobs family . Barry Callebaut took Stollwerck off the stock exchange a short time later and closed the traditional plant in Cologne, where only the administration remained. In 2006 the management of Barry Callebaut ended the collaboration with the Chocolate Museum and Lindt & Sprüngli became the museum's new partner. The name of the museum was changed to Imhoff Chocolate Museum and most of the Stollwerck exhibits were removed.

At the beginning of October 2011, Stollwerck was sold by Barry Callebaut to the Belgian group of companies Baronie . In 2016, after 177 years, the remnants of the company were relocated from Cologne to Norderstedt.

Locations

There are plants in Berlin , Saalfeld and Norderstedt (Van Houten) as well as in Caslano in Switzerland (Alprose) and Eupen in Belgium (Jacques).

Well-known acquisitions

Popular brands

  • Alpia
  • Alprose
  • Eszet
  • Jacques
  • Karina
  • Reichardt
  • Sarotti
  • Black men's chocolate

literature

  • Bruno Kuske: 100 years of Stollwerck history: 1839–1939. Cologne 1939, OCLC 8871148 .
  • Hans-Josef Joest: Stollwerck 150 years - the adventure of a global brand. Booklet accompanying the exhibition in Gürzenich in Cologne from July 8 to August 20, 1989. by Franz Rudolf Menne. Stollwerck AG. Cologne 1989, OCLC 253568435 .
  • Ingrid Haslinger: Customer - Kaiser. The story of the former imperial and royal purveyors. Schroll, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-85202-129-4 .
  • Martin Loiperdinger: Film & Schokolade - Stollwerck's Business With Living Pictures. Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-87877-760-4 .
  • Simon Fahl: Ludwig Stollwerck. Strategic decisions and entrepreneurial success 1883–1922. Cologne 2008.
  • Tanja Bettge: The Stollwerck brothers' family business (1839–1932). Company succession between traditional leadership patterns and economic ratio. In: Susanne Hilger, Ulrich S. Soénius (eds.): Family businesses in the Rhineland in the 19th and 20th centuries ( writings on Rhenish-Westphalian economic history, Volume 47). Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-933025-45-6 .
  • Sacha Widdig: Stollwerck, chocolate from Cologne. Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2013, ISBN 978-3-9540028-3-2 .
  • Tanja Junggeburth: Stollwerck 1839–1932: Entrepreneurial family and family business. Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-515-10458-6 (also revised version of the dissertation at the University of Bonn , 2012).

Web links

Commons : Stollwerck  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stollwerck.de: Imprint
  2. ↑ a b Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 4, 2011, p. 21.
  3. ↑ Display [footer] . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1904, part 1, p. 1043 (branch offices). [Footer] display . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1904, part 1, p. 1039 (factories).
  4. ↑ Display [footer] . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1904, Part 1, p. 187.
  5. ↑ Stockmann chocolate. Koidl & Cie. Holding , accessed April 30, 2018 .
  6. ↑ ksta.de: After 177 years - the Stollwerck chocolate factory, Cologne is finally turning its back on it.
  7. ↑ Locations ( Memento of the original from October 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Stollwerck website @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stollwerck.de
  8. ↑ married: Tanja Junggeburth (dissertation at the University of Bonn 2012)

Coordinates: 50 ° 54 '24 "  N , 7 ° 1' 39"  E