KTG Agrar

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KTG Agrar SE

logo
legal form Societas Europaea
founding 2000
resolution 2016
Reason for dissolution insolvency
Seat Hamburg , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management
  • Ulf Hammerich
  • Jan Ockelmann
    (board members)
Number of employees 1000 (2014)
sales 326 million euros (2015)
Branch Agriculture

KTG Agrar SE , based in Hamburg, was a listed agricultural company. In 2013 it was one of the leading producers of conventional and organically grown market crops (including cereals , corn , rapeseed and soy ) in Europe with cultivation areas of around 45,000 hectares . KTG Agrar produces agricultural raw materials , renewable energies and food. The company had been listed in the Entry Standard of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since November 2007, as Germany's first agricultural production company .

The company has been insolvent since September 2016 . The majority of the company was sold to the Zech Group and has since continued to operate as Deutsche Agrar Holding . Munich Re took over several thousand hectares of farmland from KTG Agrar in 2014 and 2015 .

activities

The KTG group included over thirty agricultural operating companies. 45,000 hectares of the production area were predominantly in Germany. a. at the locations Anklam , Quesitz , Marxdorf (Vierlinden) , Oranienburg , Podelzig , Putlitz , Wegenstedt (near Calvörde ), Nonnendorf, Linthe, Altdöbern. Since 2005, KTG has also operated production areas in Lithuania (around 7,200 hectares in Raseiniai , Geluva and Mazakai).

The company's business areas were as follows:

  • Organic cultivation of market crops (around 50% of the area); According to its own statement, KTG was the market leader in Germany in terms of the area under cultivation
  • Conventional cultivation of market crops (around 50% of the area)
  • Production of bioenergy ( biogas ): the listed subsidiary KTG Energie AG has been operating biogas plants since 2006/2007, most recently at nine locations, with a total connected load of around 30 megawatts. The renewable raw materials used there came exclusively from our own cultivation. The leftovers were used as fertilizer in our own market crops.
  • Food production: Offer of frozen goods, potato specialties, convenience food and organic oils based on organically grown raw materials
  • Other activities: acquisition and development of agricultural companies, agricultural trade , production and sale of special crops .

history

In 1996/97 the farmer Siegfried Hofreiter , his partner Beatrice Ams and his brother Werner started to set up their own organic market fruit farm. In 1999/2000 they took over the PAE group in Putlitz. In 2000 they founded KTG Agrar GmbH , in 2005 they converted it into a stock corporation and relocated the company headquarters to Hamburg. According to the company's founder, KTG is a fantasy name. Renewable raw materials have been grown since 2005 .

When the company went public in November 2007, 1.8 million shares were placed, including 1.3 million from a capital increase and up to 270,000 from the holdings of the previous sole shareholder Beatrice Ams. Around 92 percent of the shares went to institutional investors, the rest to private investors. With 54% of the shares, the majority of the shares were in free float . In 2007 Beatrice Ams was the largest single shareholder with 46%. Creditreform gave the company a BBB rating . In the company's securities prospectus, it was mentioned that the chairman of the board, Siegfried Hofreiter, was found guilty of two cases of bankruptcy and bankruptcy at the Dachau district court in September 2002. The professional ban, which was also pronounced, lasted until September 2007. On October 4, 2007, he was appointed to the board of KTG Agrar. The share started with an issue price of 17.50 euros, rose slightly and then fell to 16.50 euros shortly afterwards. A Spiegel article on the initial listing of the KTG share called it “anything but a safe investment”.

In 2007 the first biogas plants were put into operation. By the end of June 2012, these had an output of around 30 megawatts on the grid; by 2015 the total capacity rose to over 60 megawatts. Since 2009, KTG Agrar has also managed around 7,000 hectares of arable land in Romania near the city of Iași . There, KTG took over the complete farm management and all activities from cultivation planning and purchasing of operating materials to the sale of agricultural products for two German investors.

The analysts at DZ Bank expected KTG's sales to improve in 2010, but also forecast negative cash flow . The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung pointed to the rather high liabilities of 63.4 million euros to banks .

In February 2011 the subsidiary FZ Foods bought parts of the insolvent frozen food specialist Frenzel Tiefkühlkost. In June 2011, the takeover of Ölmühle Anklam GmbH & Co. The oil mill was extensively modernized and expanded for the production of ecological rapeseed oil and received a new exhaust air system and a bio filter.

On June 27, 2012 the initial public offering of the subsidiary KTG Energie was announced on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange . In the KTG Group, KTG Energie was responsible for the entire field of biogas and the third largest producer of renewable energies in Germany. The company planned and built the plants and operated them.

With the resolution of the Annual General Meeting in August 2013, KTG Agrar changed its name to a European company . On October 1, 2013, Greenyard rented a plant for the production of frozen food in Manschnow , Brandenburg , and incorporated it into the corporate structure under the name BZ-Foods 1SE; in November 2014, KTG Agrar announced its takeover. Until then, the plant processed around 10,000 tons of vegetables a year; This is where the entire frozen vegetable production of the KTG Group should be concentrated in the future.

In 2014 the Munich Strategy Group named KTG the best German medium-sized company. In 2015, KTG Agrar announced that the Chinese investment conglomerate Fosun International intends to acquire 9.03% as a major shareholder in KTG Agrar SE via its Portuguese subsidiary Fidelidade , which will increase the proportion of the shares in free float to 60.1%. A written contract could not be concluded because the person responsible for the Chinese investor did not appear to sign in December 2015. The Chinese investor's letter of intent was no longer valid at the end of 2015.

The company's turnover rose from 2010 to 2015 from EUR 80 million to EUR 326 million. However, there was a lack of profitability. The profit before taxes, interest and depreciation in 2015 amounted to EUR 59.5 million. The net profit decreased from 2014 to 2015 from 7 to 3.5 million euros.

In June 2016 it was reported that KTG Agrar was unable to pay out 18 million euros in interest on a bond due in 2017 to investors. They commissioned the protection association of capital investors to hold an extraordinary general meeting with the aim of restructuring the company. Siegfried Hofreiter said that there were already notarial contracts in which assets were to be sold in order to pay the interest without commenting on it, which is why there were then no payments. Creditreform then changed the rating from “BB-” to “not rated” on the grounds that there was insufficient information on creditworthiness. Analysts rated it as worrying that assets required for interest payments should be sold. The company has a questionable financial structure, in which the liabilities are five times as high as equity and even ten times as high as earnings before taxes, interest and depreciation . Overall, it was therefore questioned how it should be possible to repay the 250 million euros of the maturing bond in 2017. The fact that investors trusted glossy prospectuses with interest rate promises of 7 percent per annum in phases of low interest rates was commented on in the agricultural newspaper with the statement "Greed eats the brain". At the end of June 2016 it became known that at the end of 2015 KTG Agrar had changed the name of KTG Foods SE to FRS Foods International Russia & South Africa and in mid-2015 sold the frozen food manufacturer Frenzel to an unknown buyer for a EUR 27 million loan, without the investors accepting it to inform.

At the same time, a possible equity stake by the Chinese financial investor Fosun was reported, which, contrary to initial announcements, was delayed and canceled in July 2016.

On 5 July 2016 request was for the opening of insolvency proceedings in self-administration at the Hamburg District Court filed. On July 13, Hofreiter resigned from his position as CEO. It was also discussed in the press that there would be outstanding debts of 200 million euros, which are said to be loans to other companies. Except for a loan of 30 million euros to the subsidiary KTG Energie , it is not known to whom the loans were granted. On July 22, 2016, the sale of a stake in Bio-Zentrale Naturprodukte GmbH for a single-digit million amount was announced.

At the end of August 2016, the subsidiaries Delta Agrar Handel and Delta Agrar filed for bankruptcy. By then, 200 of the 800 employees had been laid off. At the beginning of September 2016, the Hamburg public prosecutor's office started investigations against several KTG managers for various offenses in connection with the bankruptcy. On September 16, 2016, it became known that the construction company Zech Group had taken over most of the shares in the insolvent KTG Agrar and a majority of the subsidiary KTG Energie . In early December 2016, the shares in a company in Lithuania were sold for a low seven-digit amount.

As became known at the end of 2016, the company had already sold almost half of its agricultural land in Germany in 2015.

criticism

The working group for rural agriculture pointed out that profits were only possible through high EU agricultural subsidies . In 2006, for example, the subsidies were 4 million euros and the profit was 2.5 million euros. By dividing the farms, the farm sizes were reduced to such an extent that discounts for large farms were largely avoided and 10 million EU agricultural subsidies were paid out annually. The annual surplus was EUR 6.5 million.

The group was one of the largest recipients of EU subsidy payments and was considered the largest owner of agricultural land in East German agriculture. Due to the concentration of land and financial resources, small and family businesses in particular feel disadvantaged, as they can hardly finance leases for agricultural land. We are even talking about land grabbing . In 2008 the company received € 5.6 million in agricultural subsidies and made a profit of € 7.5 million.

In addition, the company has been active in the production of bioenergy since 2007 and converted former agricultural areas into monocultures for maize and rape for energy generation. The company received payments from the state for feeding in bioenergy; Food producers in particular see themselves at a disadvantage as a result.

In the Agrarzeitung the commercial antecedents was discussed by Siegfried Hofreiter given the financial problems in the summer 2016th After the Hofreiter family had already gone bankrupt in 1989 with a company in the agricultural sector (arable farming and poultry farming) with a loss of DM 30 million for the creditors, the latter was convicted in 2002 for delaying bankruptcy in 1996. With the help of his partner, he circumvented the ban on being head of a corporation for five years, and he managed to collect several million euros from investors. The business strategy has always been to receive the highest possible state subsidies. In 2011, investors were guaranteed more than 7% interest per year for corporate bonds with a nominal value of EUR 250 million running until 2017. A net return of more than 7% was considered unattainable for farms and was only exceeded by the company in 2012. In 2016, the company was unable to pay the interest due, which led to the opening of insolvency proceedings on its own. There is also another corporate bond for 100 million euros. Members of the supervisory board, who only insufficiently fulfilled their control tasks, had business ties to the KTG boss or to individual subsidiaries.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Information on the company's website ( memento of November 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 6, 2016
  2. ↑ Annual Report 2014. (PDF) KTG Agrar SE, accessed on August 20, 2015 .
  3. ↑ a b c Growth on credit catches up with KTG Agrar ; Agrarzeitung , No. 23 of June 10, 2016, p. 6.
  4. ↑ Harald Schumann: The German agricultural giants . In: Tagesspiegel.de . 
  5. ↑ a b c KTG Agrar urgently needs money ; Agrarzeitung , No. 23 of June 10, 2016, p. 1.
  6. ↑ KTG: Abolition of self-administration , topagrar, September 30, 2016
  7. ↑ Family company from Bremen: Zech Group buys KTG Agrar and KTG Energie , finance.de, September 16, 2016
  8. ↑ Deutsche Agrar Holding continues to manage the majority of the KTG Group . In: top agrar online . ( topagrar.com [accessed May 6, 2018]).
  9. ↑ http://www.daholding.de/. Website of Deutsche Agrar Holding GmbH. Retrieved May 6, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Munich Re has to return acquired farmland - insurance industry today . In: Insurance Industry Today . November 9, 2017 ( versicherungswirtschaft-heute.de [accessed on May 6, 2018]).
  11. ↑ Invester relations website KTG Agrar ( Memento of 15 July 2011 at the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ a b JüB: There is now also a loan from the farmer. KTG Agrar. September 6, 2010, accessed October 30, 2018 .
  13. ↑ a b tih: Farmer Wants a stock exchange - but the stock market is no farmer. KTG Agrar. November 15, 2007, accessed October 30, 2018 .
  14. ↑ a b c Nils Klawitter: A farmer on smooth parquet. AGRICULTURE. In: Der Spiegel. Spiegel Online GmbH & Co. KG, November 12, 2007, accessed on October 31, 2018 .
  15. ↑ unknown: Saved. Frenzel frozen food. LPV GmbH, February 4, 2011, accessed on December 13, 2018 .
  16. ↑ unknown: KTG Agrar AG takes over the Anklam oil mill. Processing capacity of 100,000 tons of rapeseed. B4B MECKLENBURG-VORPOMMERN editing and media advice, June 17, 2011, accessed on December 13, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Dr. Angela Werner: KTG Agrar buys Anklam oil mill. Deutscher Fachverlag GmbH, June 7, 2011, accessed on December 13, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Fabian Lorenz: KTG Energie AG with a successful IPO to finance growth. (PDF) July 27, 2007, accessed October 30, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Conversion to KTG Agrar SE decided. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 21, 2014 ; accessed in 2013 . 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.ktg-agrar.de
  20. ↑ unknown: Greenyard Foods and KTG Agrar cooperate. SN Verlag Michael Steinert eK, September 2013, accessed on December 12, 2018 .
  21. ↑ unknown: KTG Agrar SE takes over deep-freeze plant in Manschnow and leverages synergies. KTG Agrar SE, November 21, 2014, accessed on December 12, 2018 .
  22. ↑ Ines Rath: KTG buys Manschnow plant. Märkisches Medienhaus GmbH & Co. KG, November 26, 2014, accessed on December 12, 2018 (note the contradictions to the official company announcement).
  23. ↑ KTG Agrar SE: Fidelidade-Companhia de Seguros SA, Portugal, controlled by Fosun International Limited, Shanghai, China, will acquire 9.03% of KTG Agrar SE ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2015 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. , June 29, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ktg-agrar.de
  24. ↑ a b c d e f Landwirtschaft Agrarriese KTG files for bankruptcy , Märkische Allgemeine online, July 6, 2016
  25. ↑ a b c FAZ.net / Jan Grossarth: Germany's largest farmer reaps 600 million euros in debt (July 12, 2016)
  26. ↑ Martin Hock: KTG Agrar does not pay the interest on time. Mittelstand bonds. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH, June 6, 2016, accessed on November 14, 2018 : “Is the next big bankruptcy in SME bonds maturing? The agricultural company cannot pay its interest on Monday. "
  27. ↑ a b c Horst Hermannsen: In the clamp ; Agrarzeitung , No. 23 of June 10, 2016, p. 2.
  28. ↑ Mario Brück and Henryk Hielscher: Can the crisis group still be saved? Diffuse business conduct at KTG Agrar. Handelsblatt GmbH, July 1, 2016, accessed on December 12, 2018 .
  29. ↑ Annina Reimann: Chinese major investor Fosun hesitates with the entry. KTG Agrar. Handelsblatt GmbH, June 9, 2016, accessed on December 12, 2018 .
  30. ↑ Ad-Hoc: Restructuring and reorganization of KTG Agrar SE in the ESUG. (No longer available online.) July 5, 2016, archived from the original on July 5, 2016 ; Retrieved July 5, 2016 . 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.ktg-agrar.de
  31. ↑ Ad-Hoc: Change in the Management Board of KTG Agrar SE ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2016 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.ktg-agrar.de
  32. ↑ KTG Agrar SE, ad hoc announcement , July 22, 2016.
  33. ↑ Jürgen Hoffmann: KTG Agrar-Verwalter sees "dramatic situation". In: welt.de. Axel Springer SE, March 1, 2018, accessed on November 14, 2018 .
  34. ^ Trial of the bankruptcy of KTG Agrar. Millions in damages demanded. In: www.wiwo.de. The Handelsblatt Media Group, 23 August 2018, accessed on 14 November 2018 .
  35. ↑ Germany's largest agricultural concern: Insolvent KTG Agrar sold to construction company. In: Spiegel Online . September 16, 2016, accessed June 10, 2018 .
  36. ↑ Stoffels + Barck GbR Germany: KTG Agrar: News from Lithuania | www.4investors.de. Retrieved March 4, 2019 .
  37. ↑ Insolvent group: This is how KTG Agrar bought its own grain , FAZ, December 1, 2016
  38. ↑ An LPG company goes public , Bundesverband Deutscher Landwirte, deutsche-landwirte.de, November 15, 2007
  39. ↑ Land grabbing in the neighborhood. WOZ, March 6, 2014, accessed June 7, 2014 .
  40. ↑ Are speculators buying up the East? Der Tagesspiegel, August 12, 2013, accessed on June 7, 2014 .
  41. ^ Cross-border commuters: How a Bavarian cowboy conquers Brandenburg , welt.de, November 9, 2009
  42. ↑ About us: Energy production / biogas business area. (No longer available online.) KTG Agrar SE, archived from the original on July 13, 2014 ; Retrieved June 7, 2014 .
  43. ↑ Big builder from Hamburg dares to go public? In: Hamburger Abendblatt. June 21, 2012, accessed June 7, 2014 .
  44. ↑ BUND calls for a fairer distribution of agricultural subsidies based on ecological criteria. SPD countries are not allowed to block the agricultural turnaround. BUND, August 28, 2013, accessed June 7, 2014 .
  45. ↑ a b What moves Siegfried Hofreiter ?: Der Ganzgroßbauer , Die Zeit No. 3/2016, January 14, 2016
  46. ↑ a b The very large farmer goes , weekly paper for agriculture and rural life, July 14, 2016
  47. ↑ SME bonds : KTG Agrar does not pay the interest on time , FAZ.net June 6, 2016
  48. ↑ There is nothing left to harvest at KTG Agrar