FrieslandCampina Germany

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FrieslandCampina Germany GmbH

logo
legal form GmbH
founding December 31, 2008
Seat Heilbronn
Number of employees 1809
sales EUR 865 million
Branch Food , milk processing
Website www.frieslandcampina.de
Status: 2010

Campina headquarters in Heilbronn (2006)

The FrieslandCampina Germany GmbH (formerly Campina GmbH & Co. KG ) is a large milk processing company based in Heilbronn . Its parent company is the company Koninklijke FrieslandCampina , which was created on December 31, 2008 through the merger of Friesland Foods and Campina BV and is headquartered in Amersfoort in the Netherlands . The German branch of the company emerged in 1996 from the former Südmilch AG .

history

Milk supply Heilbronn GmbH

On July 1, 1924, Milchversorgung Heilbronn GmbH (MVH) was founded in Heilbronn and replaced the municipal milk office that had existed since 1914. Initially, the shareholders of the MVH were the city of Heilbronn to 60% and the buying and selling cooperative of milk traders to 40%. On February 21, 1926, the milk supply of the newly built Heilbronner Milchhof went into operation. By 1933, dairy operations were established in Ilsfeld , Bretzfeld , Neuenstadt am Kocher and Mainhardt , which were taken over by MVH as branches. In 1933 agricultural partners were added. In 1968, a new dairy factory was built in Neckargartach , which at the time was one of the most modern of its kind in Europe. After the start of operations in this plant at the turn of 1968/69, the Heilbronner Milchhof, all previous branches and a number of milk collection points were shut down.

Südmilch AG

Südmilch AG logo
Preferred share for DM 100 in Südmilch AG from June 1972

In June 1969, the interregional milk interest group (Intermilch Group) was formed in Heilbronn , which, in addition to MVH, was joined by Württ. Milchverwertung Südmilch AG (WMV) from Stuttgart and Dauermilchwerk Hohenlohe-Franken GmbH from Künzelsau , making it the largest in Germany milk processing company was. On June 29, 1972, MVH merged with WMV to form Südmilch AG . At that time, Südmilch AG had an annual turnover of 13 billion DM. After it expanded very strongly at the end of the 1980s and in connection with the German reunification, Südmilch AG took over the large dairy Dresdner Milchversorgungs-Anstalt in Dresden-Plauen in the course of the reprivatisation and renamed it in 1990 to Sachsenmilch AG . The management functions were largely filled with people from the Südmilch executive board. For CEO Sachsenmilch was Wolfgang Weber , the supervisory board chairman Friedrich Wilhelm Schnitzler was chosen. However, already in 1991 financial problems arose in the implementation of the project. There was an economic affair at Sachsenmilch, caused by Wolfgang Weber and publicly known as the Südmilch scandal , which ended with imprisonment for some of the managers involved. Then Sachsenmilch AG became a subsidiary of the Theo Müller group of companies , which produces under the brand names Sachsenmilch and Käsemeister . The company was the first in East Germany to be listed on the German stock exchange with ISIN DE000A0DRXC4 . In 1993 Südmilch AG was taken over by the Dutch cooperative Campina Melkunie (now Royal FrieslandCampina ). Friedrich Wilhelm Schnitzler (Fritz Schnitzler) was co-founder, chairman of the board and chairman of the supervisory board of Südmilch AG . Schnitzler held this exceptional double function at the time, due to the imprisonment of several managers. Schnitzler handled the merger of Südmilch AG and Campina BV.

Südmilch scandal

Wolfgang Weber was Chairman of the Board of Management from 1972 to 1992 and then Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Südmilch AG in Stuttgart until January 1993. At the time, Südmilch AG was the largest German dairy group. In 1990, Sachsenmilch AG was founded under the leadership of Südmilch AG , the management functions of which were largely occupied by people from the Südmilch executive board. According to investigations by the public prosecutor's office, financial problems in the implementation of the project became apparent as early as 1991. Weber defrauded the stock corporation by approx. 38 million DM. He succeeded in this million-dollar fraud through a manager (accomplice) at Deutsche Bank , who presented the then chairman of the supervisory board of Südmilch AG, Friedrich Wilhelm Schnitzler, with falsified bank documents (balance sheets) and deceived other parties involved. According to the public prosecutor's office, Weber is suspected of having tried to sell Südmilch AG to the detriment of the East German Sachsenmilch AG by selling know-how. In this context, he is said to have damaged the share buyers and the issuing bank through false information with the initial public offering of Sachsenmilch AG, which was supervised by Südmilch AG. In addition to joint fraud, the public prosecutor's office also accuses him of embezzlement to the detriment of Sachsenmilch AG. Weber fled to Paraguay in 1993, where he used the money to set up cattle farms and supply McDonald’s with meat products. In 1992, Wolfgang Weber brought Frank Staudacher from the Kraft Foods Group to Stuttgart. Staudacher was elected CEO of Südmilch by the supervisory board. For example, from 1992 to January 1993, Wolfgang Weber was elected chairman of the supervisory board of Südmilch AG, as the previous chairman of the supervisory board, Friedrich Wilhelm Schnitzler, only wanted to work as a supervisory board member at Südmilch AG due to his activities as supervisory board and executive board chairman in other groups. However, due to a secret additional contract with another company (case of fraud), Frank Staudacher was immediately dismissed by the Südmilch AG supervisory board. Thereafter, in January 1993, Friedrich Wilhelm Schnitzler was re-elected by the supervisory board as chairman of the supervisory board and chairman of the board of Südmilch AG at the top of the group, whereby Schnitzler held the exceptional double function of chairman of the supervisory board and chairman of the board, due to the imprisonment of several managers. Several Südmilch AG managers were sentenced to several years in prison. At Weber, the arrest warrant for a security deposit of 100,000 euros was suspended in 2003. At the end of 1993, Friedrich Wilhelm Schnitzler successfully merged with what was then Campina BV , now FrieslandCampina Germany, in Holland. This means that Südmilch has been retained as a brand within FrieslandCampina Germany to this day.

Sachsenmilch AG

In 1990, Sachsenmilch AG was founded under the management of Südmilch AG, and its management functions were largely filled by people from the Südmilch board of directors. After financial problems, in 1991, Sachsenmilch AG became a subsidiary of the Theo Müller group .

Campina GmbH

In 1996 Campina AG emerged from the former Südmilch AG . After mergers with other German Campina-Melkunie subsidiaries, the company was converted into Campina GmbH in 1999 and into Campina GmbH & Co. KG in 2002 . From 1997, the Rheinland milk supply and the Cologne-Wuppertal milk works (with operations in Cologne , Wuppertal , Essen , Iserlohn and Lindlar- Hommerich) were integrated. In addition, Emzett, Kutel and Strothmann dairy were taken over. Since September 2007 the company has been called Campina GmbH, in 2009 it was renamed FrieslandCampina Germany GmbH due to the merger of the parent company . In March 2015, the company had production sites in Heilbronn, Cologne, Gütersloh and Schefflenz . In May 2018, the Group announced that it would be relocating major parts of administration, in particular marketing and sales, from Heilbronn to Düsseldorf from the fourth quarter of 2018 .

The company in numbers

Campina currently has around 2200 employees in Germany. The annual milk consumption is around 1.4 billion liters ( as of March 2004 ). Sales in 2005: € 846 million in Germany, € 3569 million worldwide.

criticism

In 2005, the group was heavily criticized by environmental organizations for the fact that farmers who supply the company with milk also grow genetically modified maize . Greenpeace said the company should ensure that these farmers' dairy cows are not fed genetically modified corn. Several comparable dairies already rely on certified feed. Thilo Bode, head of Foodwatch , renewed this criticism in October 2007. Since October 2008, Campina has not used genetically modified feed for fresh and long-life milk from the Landliebe brand, and has also advertised this on the packaging. From April 2009 yoghurt and desserts “without genetic engineering” should also be offered; Several of the brand's products now have the “Ohne Gentechnik” label.

The regional brand Mark Brandenburg was also criticized . The milk sold under this brand for the eastern federal states came exclusively from North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate. In September 2013 FrieslandCampina sold the brand (together with the yoghurt brand Milchreiter ) to the Hessian Odenwald-Frucht GmbH.

Choice of brands

Fruttis logo

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry Milchversorgung GmbH Heilbronn in the HEUSS database of the Heilbronn City Archives , contemporary history collection, signature ZS-880
  2. ↑ Check after work time online August 6, 1993. Accessed June 6, 2017
  3. ^ DGAP-DD: Sachsenmilch AG
  4. ↑ TV show MUM: Suedmilch AG - Campina BV part 1/2 (source: SWR Stuttgart) - video on YouTube
  5. ↑ TV show MUM: Suedmilch AG - Campina BV Part 2/2 (Source: SWR Stuttgart) - Video on YouTube
  6. ↑ Two years probation for ex-Südmilch boss Süddeutsche Zeitung May 19, 2010. Accessed June 6, 2017
  7. ^ The previous Südmilch boss had a secret supplementary contract ... FAZ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 09/14/1993
  8. ↑ Sources for the section on the Südmilch scandal:
  9. ↑ www.campina.de: Locations (accessed on March 21, 2015)
  10. ↑ FrieslandCampina moves to Düsseldorf Report in the daily newspaper Rheinische Post from May 29, 2018, accessed on May 29, 2018
  11. ↑ cf. The statement by Greenpeace GM maize out of control: Campina suppliers feed GM maize to dairy cows, online at Greenpeace.de ( memento of the original from September 29, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.greenpeace.de
  12. ↑ "You can no longer rely on anything" . Interview with the Foodwatch boss Thilo Bode about the quality of branded products (including Landliebe) . In: FAZ.net from October 15, 2007
  13. ↑ Milk without genetic engineering . focus.de, October 6, 2008 (accessed November 30, 2008)
  14. ↑ "The Landliebe range without genetic engineering" , www.landliebe.de, accessed on April 2, 2020
  15. ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/verbübersposse-die-mark-brandenburg-kehrt-zurueck-nach-brandenburg/8739146.html

literature

  • Kultur und Wirtschaftschronik Heilbronn , Kunstverlag J. Bühn, Munich o. J.
  • Volker Grub: The court settlement procedure of Südmilch-AG . Brugger, Schöngeising 1998, ISBN 3-9805758-2-9
  • Martin Born : Country love, felt and deceit. The southern milk bankruptcy . Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1996, ISBN 3-593-35484-5

Web links

Coordinates: 49 ° 10 ′ 53.5 ″  N , 9 ° 11 ′ 58.2 ″  E