Lindt & Sprüngli

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Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG

logo
legal form Corporation
ISIN CH0010570759
founding 1898
Seat Kilchberg (ZH) , SwitzerlandSwitzerlandSwitzerland 
management Ernst Tanner ( Chairman of the Board of Directors )
Dieter Weisskopf (Chairman of the Management Board )
Number of employees 14,621 (2019)
sales CHF 4,509 million  (2019)
Branch food
Website www.lindt-spruengli.com

Factory and headquarters in Kilchberg

The Lindt & Sprüngli AG is an internationally active Swiss chocolate manufacturer based in Kilchberg on Lake Zurich .

history

Plant in Aachen
Share for CHF 500 in the Lindt & Sprüngli AG chocolate factory on September 1, 1930
Personnel entrance of the Lindt & Sprüngli factory in Kilchberg / ZH

The origins of Lindt & Sprüngli lie in the two chocolate factories of Rudolf Sprüngli in Horgen and Zurich (former Werdmühle , today Werdmühleplatz) and of Rodolphe Lindt in Bern . Rudolf Sprüngli Junior took over his father's company in 1891. A year later, Confiserie Sprüngli was spun off as a separate company. In 1899 Rudolf Sprüngli built the factory in Kilchberg and in the same year converted the company into a stock corporation. The Chocolat Sprüngli AG took over soon after the Berne chocolate factory of Rodolphe Lindt together with the patent for its conching . The Aktiengesellschaft Vereinigte Berner und Zürcher Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli was born. The old Lindt house in Bern's Mattenquartier is still painted with the company logo today.

In Germany, a license agreement for production was signed in 1935 with Leonard Monheim AG , Berlin. In 1988, Lindt & Sprüngli took over the production there itself and has since produced a large part of the internationally sold items in Aachen near the Westbahnhof . The plant in Aachen acts as a competence center for hollow figures .

The IPO of Lindt & Sprüngli in 1986 laid the foundation for international expansion: in 1989 the production and administration building in Stratham, New Hampshire , USA, went into operation. In the same year, Lindt & Sprüngli SA in France came fully into the possession of the parent company. In 1993 the long-time licensee Bulgheroni SpA in Induno Olona, ​​Italy, was integrated into the company as Lindt & Sprüngli SpA . In the following year, Lindt & Sprüngli (Austria) GmbH was founded in Austria and the Viennese Confiserie Hofbauer was integrated into the company. In 1997 the Italian company “Caffarel” in Turin was bought up and a Lindt & Sprüngli Company was founded in Sydney . At the beginning of 1998, the “ Ghirardelli Chocolate Company ” in San Francisco , the oldest American chocolate factory, was acquired. Further subsidiaries can be found in Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Sweden, Spain and South Africa. In July 2014, Lindt & Sprüngli announced the takeover of the traditional US confectionery manufacturer Russell Stover Candies Inc., the largest in the company's history to date. With Russell Stover, who also owns the Whitman’s brand and has a market share of 60% for pralines in the USA, Lindt & Sprüngli has become the third largest company in the chocolate industry in North America and is now also present there with its other brands. Russel Stover's product range was, however, much too broad and their sales too strongly seasonal. Lindt and Sprüngli tried to reduce this dependency on Christmas, Valentine's Day and Easter in the hope of stabilizing the American business, which achieved a third of the company's turnover.

Corporate structure

Business cafes

Since 1994, all group companies, including the previous Swiss parent company Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli (Schweiz) AG , have been run as wholly-owned subsidiaries by an international group management within the framework of the holding company Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli Aktiengesellschaft . According to the company, the majority of the shares are still in Swiss hands.

Activities in Germany

The business in Germany is operated by Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli GmbH in Aachen, which operates under the Lindt brand . It is a 100% subsidiary of the Swiss chocolate factories Lindt & Sprüngli AG . In 2018, an average of 2,759 employees generated an annual turnover of 744 million euros.

Products

Logo of the Lindt brand

In addition to a wide variety of chocolate bars, Lindt & Sprüngli also produces pralines . There are also seasonal products such as Santa Clauses or Easter items. Chocolate bars with a high cocoa content (> 60 percent) or exotic ingredients such as pepper or chopped chili peppers are becoming increasingly important . Lindt & Sprüngli offers chocolate or hazelnut cream as a spread in various European countries.

  • Advertising around 1900

  • Lindor balls

  • chocolates

Lindt & Sprüngli does not have its products certified by any external body such as UTZ Certified or Fairtrade according to sustainability and social criteria and does not plan to do so. According to their own information, however, 79% of all cocoa beans are verified externally and they have been working directly with their own partner in Ghana since 2005, which enables seamless traceability.

Golden bunny

various gold hares

The gold bunny is a hollow body made of chocolate in the shape of a sitting bunny , which is made for Easter . In addition to gold-colored packaging, they have a bell on a mostly red collar. The product was first sold in Germany in 1952 and is sold in over 60 countries. Since 2010, over 100 million units have been sold worldwide every year.

The golden bunny is available in sizes 10 g, 50 g, 100 g, 200 g, 500 g and 1000 g as well as in the varieties whole milk (red collar), dark (brown collar), nut (green collar) and white chocolate (cream-colored Collar). In addition, various merchandise items such as clothing, dishes, key rings or a gold bunny as a cuddly toy are available.

Lindt & Sprüngli registered the gold bunny as a trademark in the EU in 2000 and a year later in Germany. Based on this, the company took legal action against similar products from other manufacturers in the years that followed. Please refer to the Litigation section .

Product reviews

The chocolate magazine Chclt.net awards Lindt chocolates with a taste rating of between 72 and 87 (out of 100) points and notes a taste «family similarity». The German chocolate critic Georg Bernardini rates the quality of the tested Lindt products with only 2 out of 6 possible points and criticizes the partial use of nature-identical flavorings, but praises the company's “creativity of the product developers”.

Litigation

The Supreme Court in Vienna decided on March 26, 2012 in a ten-year dispute against the Austrian manufacturer Hauswirth that the golden chocolate bunny with a red ribbon , also known as the gold bunny , would only be sold in this form by Lindt & Sprüngli in Austria may. On May 24, 2012, Lindt & Sprüngli was defeated by the European Court of Justice in an attempt to have the golden bunny protected as a trademark throughout Europe . In the application process that has been running since 2004, the company was unable to prove that the average European consumer inferred from the hare's appearance that it was the manufacturer. Protection throughout the EU was therefore not possible.

On March 28, 2013, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe dismissed a non-admission complaint by Lindt & Sprüngli against a decision by the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main , according to which the Franconian company Riegelein was also allowed to sell a chocolate bunny that is in a sitting position. The German manufacturer offers its rabbits in a slightly darker, bronze-colored foil. With the decision of the Federal Court of Justice, a likelihood of confusion between the two products was finally denied.

On December 18, 2012, it became known that Lindt & Sprüngli had been defeated in proceedings before the Cologne Regional Court against the Haribo company because of the similarity of the “Lindt-Teddy” chocolate bear to the Haribo gold bears and therefore had to take the chocolate bears out of the trade. In April 2014, however, the Cologne Higher Regional Court overturned the judgment, so that the bears can be resold for the time being. Most recently, the Cologne Higher Regional Court dismissed the Bonn gummy bear manufacturer's lawsuit . In contrast, Haribo had gone on appeal to the Federal Court of Justice. The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe finally dismissed this in September 2015. The trademark rights of the gummy bear manufacturer Haribo are not infringed by the so-called "Lindt teddy", the judges ruled.

various

Imhoff Chocolate Museum in Cologne

Lindt & Sprüngli has been the official partner of the Imhoff Chocolate Museum in Cologne since March 2006 .

The company's shares are among the most expensive stocks in the world. On June 3, 2016, the registered shares were listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange at 72,945.00 Swiss francs. According to a Handelsblatt report from January 2019, "a registered share of Lindt and Sprüngli costs up to 80,000 francs (71,000 euros)".

literature

Documentaries

  • Bitter passion. How the desire for chocolate arises. Report, Germany, 2005, 40 min., Script and direction: Steffi Cassel, production: Spiegel TV , first broadcast: November 24, 2005 on VOX , table of contents and video .
  • Lindt & Sprüngli focuses on the young and the Chinese. TV report, Switzerland, 2012, 2:18 min., Director: Patrizia Laeri , production: Schweizer Fernsehen , editing: SF Börse, first broadcast: August 21, 2012 on SF, video .
  • The Chocolate King and the Golden Bunny. TV report, Switzerland, 2011, 5:40 min., Director: Patrizia Laeri, production: Schweizer Fernsehen , editing: 10vor10 , first broadcast: April 21, 2011 on SF, video .

Web links

Commons : Lindt & Sprüngli  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Entry ( memento of December 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) in the commercial register of the Canton of Zurich , accessed on July 23, 2011.
  2. ↑ Change in the top management of Lindt & Sprüngli. Lindt Sprüngli AG, June 3, 2016, accessed on June 5, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b Annual Report 2019. (pdf) Lindt & Sprüngli, accessed on May 24, 2020 .
  4. ↑ The Zurich Confiserie David Sprüngli & Sohn bought the former blacksmith's shop in Schleifetobel in Horgen in 1846 and set up their first chocolate factory there, whose initial waterwheel was operated by the Heubach. Source: Horgner yearbook 2017.
  5. ^ Adrian Müller: Bern's forgotten chocolate story . In: The Bund . October 13, 2016, ISSN  0774-6156 ( derbund.ch [accessed December 11, 2018]).
  6. ↑ FAZ, April 4, 2015, p. 28.
  7. ^ A b c Lindt & Sprüngli: Company history .
  8. ↑ Large takeover in the USA: Lindt & Sprüngli buys the pralines from “Forrest Gump” , NZZ.ch, July 14, 2014.
  9. ↑ The strength of Lindt and Sprüngli is melting away , NZZ, January 17, 2018, page 25
  10. ↑ Annual financial statements as of December 31, 2018 , bundesanzeiger.de, accessed on August 18, 2020
  11. ↑ Ben Cooper: Sustainability Watch - Interview with Piera Waibel, Lindt & Sprungli . just-food.com from January 2, 2014.
  12. ↑ dpa: Sustainable equals fair ?: Germans eat chocolate for a clear conscience . In: The time . December 6, 2018, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed September 29, 2019]).
  13. ↑ dpa: Sustainable equals fair ?: Germans eat chocolate for a clear conscience . In: The time . December 6, 2018, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed September 29, 2019]).
  14. ↑ Daniel Puntas Bernet: Eating sweet things with a clear conscience | NZZ . March 21, 2009, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed September 29, 2019]).
  15. ↑ Dieter Weisskopf: Lindt is breaking new ground in procurement | NZZ . September 11, 2012, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed on September 29, 2019]).
  16. ↑ Cocoa procurement. February 12, 2019, accessed September 29, 2019 .
  17. ↑ An old hand who stayed young forever. Lindt press release, January 16, 2015.
  18. ↑ The Lindt Golden Bunny. Lindt. Retrieved March 25, 2018.
  19. ↑ Sales of gold bunnies from Lindt worldwide from 2003 to 2014 (in millions). Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2018.
  20. ↑ Richter rejects monopoly for Lindt gold bunnies. Zeit Online, March 28, 2013, accessed March 25, 2018.
  21. ^ Lindt chocolates in the Chclt.net test , accessed on July 10, 2013.
  22. ^ Bernardini, Georg: The chocolate tester. The best chocolates and pralines in the world. What is behind it and what we gladly do without (Bonn 2012), pp. 390–392, ISBN 978-3-00-039820-9 .
  23. ^ Easter bunny dispute: Lindt wins. In: Courier . March 26, 2012, accessed August 2, 2016 .
  24. ↑ No protection for the golden bunny . ( Memento from August 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ↑ Lindt's gold bunny has to put up with competition . welt.de, March 28, 2013.
  26. ↑ Lindt's chocolate teddy bear looks too similar to Haribo's gold bears. In: Sueddeutsche.de . December 18, 2012, accessed December 18, 2012 .
  27. ↑ Chocolate Teddy doesn't look too much like Goldbär . Handelsblatt dated April 11, 2014. Retrieved January 20, 2015.
  28. ↑ Lindt wins bear fight against Haribo . In: FAZ , September 23, 2015.
  29. ↑ The most expensive individual stocks in the world , boerse.ARD.de, February 29, 2016.
  30. ↑ Series: The Most Expensive Stocks in the World. Lindt and Sprüngli - the share not only has a chocolate side , handelsblatt.de from January 19, 2019, accessed on April 3, 2019