Ottakringer Brewery

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Ottakringer Brewery GmbH

logo
legal form Company with limited liability
ISIN AT0000758032
founding 1838 (brewing permit 1837)
Seat Vienna (Ottakring) , Austria
management Matthias Ortner (since March 2, 2015) Tobias Frank (since September 2016)
Number of employees around 180 (2018)
sales 80 million € (2018)
Branch brewery
Website www.ottakringerbrauerei.at

The old Ottakringer brewery
One Ottakringer share from 1905
Ottakringer Brewery, 1938
The brewhouse of the Ottakringer brewery

The Ottakringer Brewery is an independent large brewery in the 16th district of  Vienna , Ottakring .

history

The Ottakringer Brewery was opened by the master miller Heinrich Plank in 1837 under the name Planksche Brewery , after the landlord at the time , Klosterneuburg Abbey , had granted the brewing permit in 1837.

In 1850 it was taken over by Ignaz and Jakob Kuffner , who had previously leased the brewery there. The two expanded the business into a large brewery. Within ten years, the output increased from 18,318  hl to 64,183 hl.

Similar to other industrialists of the early days , the Kuffner also acted as sponsors of “their” community. A new fermentation cellar and larger warehouse were put into operation in 1857. In 1878 Ignaz Kuffner was elevated to the Austrian nobility by the emperor .

Moriz von Kuffner , son of Ignaz von Kuffner, inherited his father's brewery shares in 1882 and that of his childless uncle Jakob in 1891. The brewery increased the output from over 170,000 hl in 1890 to over 350,000 hl in the last year before the war; an amount never reached in the interwar period . In 1905, Kuffner had the brewery converted into a stock corporation. The First World War and the interwar period, the company survived relatively unscathed under the leadership of Maurice Kuffner.

In 1938, when Austria was “annexed” to the German Reich , the then 85-year-old Moriz Kuffner (the nobility mark “von” had disappeared in 1919) was forced to sell his company due to his Jewish origins. It was sold for 14 million shillings (according to today's value about 36 million euros) to Gustav Harmer , an alcohol manufacturer from Spillern near Stockerau . Harmer, in turn, was driven out of the business for two years after the Second World War. In 1949 and 1950 the heirs of Moriz Kuffner, who died in exile in Zurich in 1939, were compensated by the Harmer family with around eleven million schillings.

The historian Oliver Rathkolb stated in his report on restitution comparison - The documentation of a case , Vienna, 2000, among other things: In the overall assessment it can be stated that the Harmer family endeavored both in 1938 and after 1945 to achieve a - under the conditions of Nazi regime - correct handling of the sale initiated by the Gestapo threats to the Kuffner family. After 1945, the family actively sought contact with the head of the family, Stephan Kuffner, in the USA and sought a final regulation - even before the restitution laws were passed. And further: There are probably few restitution cases, but also acquisitions after the Nazi regime came to power in 1938, in which the existing political framework was exploited so extensively in favor of the victims and the original owners, as in the case of the Ottakringer-Kuffner Group.

After the end of the war, the brewery was provisionally managed by the Soviet occupying forces before the Harmer family managed to prove their legal acquisition. From 1955 to 1962 beer output could be increased from 125,000 to 236,000 hectoliters. In 1962 Gustav Harmer and his brother-in-law Engelbert Wenckheim joined the company and gradually took over management of the brewery together.

In 1977 the brewery made a significant contribution to breaking it up by leaving the beer cartel . The Austrian beer cartel was founded in 1907 as the "Protection Association of Alpine Breweries" and regulated very strictly which brewery was allowed to supply which area. Since then, every restaurateur has been able to choose which brewery to choose as supplier, regardless of their location.

In 1986 Ottakringer Brauerei AG went public and the Kapsreiter brewery in Schärding was acquired. In 1989 Ottakringer introduced newly developed, green shoulder bottles and from then on did without the brown beer bottles standardized throughout Austria . In 1991 the alcohol-free Zero Comma Josef came onto the market. (The name takes up an Eastern Austrian dialect term.) Just one year after its introduction, it became the market leader in its segment.

In 1995 Gustav Harmer resigned as sole director of the Ottakringer Brewery. After leaving the management, Gustav Harmer led the Harmer Holding, Kapsreiter Bier and the Grieskirchner Bier brewery , which was added later . His brother-in-law, Engelbert Wenckheim, was appointed sole director after he left in 1995. In 1997, the first Austrian brewery to use the new twist cork closures. In 1999 the logo of the Ottakringer brewery was redesigned.

After five years as sole director, Engelbert Wenckheim moved to the supervisory board of Ottakringer Brauerei AG. His daughter, Christiane Wenckheim, former marketing director of the Ottakringer brewery, and the controlling head of the Ottakringer brewery, Siegfried Menz, were appointed to the board. After the restructuring of the group in 2010, Menz rose to the management board of Ottakringer Getränke. During the restructuring, Ottakringer Brauerei AG and Vöslauer Mineralwasser AG became subsidiaries of Ottakringer Getränke AG.

The brewery site in the 16th district (2012); the tallest building is the Darreturm
Raspberry Kracherl from the Ottakringer Brewery

Christiane Wenckheim was the sole director of Ottakringer Brauerei AG until she was elected to the supervisory board of Ottakringer Getränke AG in 2015 - following her father - by the general meeting. Engelbert Wenckheim has since been chairman of the supervisory board of Ottakringer Holding AG, the main ownership holding of Ottakringer Getränke AG. On March 2, 2015, Matthias Ortner was appointed to the Management Board of Ottakringer Brewery AG. Since September 2016, Ottakringer Brauerei AG has been managed by board members Matthias Ortner and Tobias Frank (1st master brewer since 2012). On December 20, 2014, the Innstadt brewery from Passau, founded in 1318 and taken over by Ottakringer as a subsidiary in 2000, ceased production. The Innstadt brand was not lost as a result of the closure, but will be continued by the Hacklberg brewery in Passau , which had also taken over the majority of the employees. On June 16, 2017, the Ottakringer Group announced that it would sell its loss-making Hungarian brewery Pécsi Sörfőzde Zrt from Fünfkirchen to two Hungarian companies. The sale was completed in 2017.

Company structure

Ottakringer Holding AG is owned by the Austrian families Wenckheim, Menz, Trauttenberg and Pfusterschmid and holds around 88% in Ottakringer Getränke AG, 6% is held by Ottakringer Getränke AG itself, the remaining 6% are in free float and will become part of Wiener Traded on the stock exchange. With the acquisition of 13.43% of the shares in Ottakringer Brauerei GmbH from the Dutch beer group Heineken in 2009, the Ottakringer Brewery became Austrian property again.

In 2018 Ottakringer Getränke AG has significant investments in:

  • Ottakringer Brauerei GmbH (100% share)
  • Vöslauer Mineralwasser GmbH (100% share)
  • Trinkservice GmbH (100% share)
  • Del Fabro & Kolarik GmbH (beverage wholesalers, share 61.8%)

The 16 mm sheet

Purulent with 16 mm sheet

In the Viennese dialect , especially in connection with an order at the sausage stand, the phrase "A Eitrige, an Bugl and a 16er-Blech" for "a cheese krainer, a bread end piece (also called Scherzel in Vienna) and a can of Ottakringer beer" is still often used. used. 16 stands for the 16th district of Vienna Ottakring and sheet metal for the can material. From 2007 Ottakringer had a 16er Blech canned beer brand in its range for a few years .

Own well

The Ottakringer brewery draws the brewing water from its own well. The well has a depth of 118 meters and is artesian . The well water is used for the entire brewing process, including filling and cleaning. In addition, the brewery has a contract with the City of Vienna that in the event of a water shortage in Vienna, the Ottakringer fountain water is fed into the Vienna water system.

Darreturm

The 41.5 m high Darreturm was built in 1907, an octagonal construction over a rectangular floor plan of 7.5 m by 7.5 m. The top of the tower is also called "Frosch von Ottakring", "Ritter von Ottakring" or "Dradiwaberl". The drying tower was in operation until the 1980s. The Darreturm, the Goldfassl-Magazin and the brewhouse building have been under monument protection since 2002.

Sponsorship

Ottakringer has sponsored the Vienna football club SK Rapid since 1994 .

For the 2008 European Football Championship, Ottakringer launched the unofficial fan beer , bottled in over 15 million bottles or cans, which was understood as a protest beer, since the European Championship was held in Austria, but the Danish Carlsberg Group acquired the exclusive serving rights in the fan zones as a sponsor of UEFA and no Austrian beer was allowed to be served there.

Unofficial fan beer of the Ottakringer brewery

The brewery has also been a sponsor of the Vienna ice hockey team Vienna Capitals since 2012 .

Web links

Commons : Ottakringer Brewery  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Report on the AG website of March 2, 2015 (2018 no longer available).
  2. ↑ a b Brewmaster Tobias Frank elected to the board. at ottakringerbrauerei.at, accessed on October 16, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b Ottakringer Brauerei AG: Facts and figures about the brewery. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b c Ottakringer. The brewery. History on ottakringerbrauerei.at, also history of the Ottakringer Brewery ( Memento from September 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Conrad Seidl : 35 years of Austrian beer history: A look back at falstaff.at from January 19, 2016, accessed on October 16, 2018.
  6. ↑ Brewery history with permission from Michael Kranewitter on brauereifuehrer.com.
  7. ↑ 175 years of hop juice from Ottakring. Text from October 1, 2012 on the website of the Vienna daily Kurier. , accessed October 16, 2018.
  8. ↑ Ottakringer Getränke AG - Strong start of the new red-white-red group on ots.at March 24, 2010, accessed on October 16, 2018.
  9. ↑ Matthias Ortner is the new Marketing Director at Ottakringer: More beer should flow in the west on extrajournal.net from March 2, 2015, accessed on October 16, 2018.
  10. ↑ End of a Passau brewing tradition: Last day at the Innstadt brewery on wochenblatt.de from December 20, 2014, accessed on June 16, 2017.
  11. ↑ Ottakringer sells loss-making Hungarian subsidiary on orf.at from June 16, 2017, accessed on October 16, 2018.
  12. ↑ ottakringerkonzern.com website of Ottakringer Getränke AG, accessed on August 3, 2018.
  13. ↑ Slice of bread - hump. Entry in ostarrichi.org - Language in Austria , accessed on February 14, 2014.
  14. ↑ Robert Sedlaczek : The 16 mm sheet makes a career. Sedlaczek on Wednesday. In: Wiener Zeitung , March 13, 2007, accessed on February 14, 2014.
  15. ↑ Othenio Abel: About some artesian well bores in Ottakring and their geological and palaeontological results. In: Yearbook dkk geol. Reichsanstalt. Volume 47, Issue 3, 1897, pp. 479–504 ( PDF on opac.geologie.ac.at ).
  16. ↑ The beer fountain of the Ottakringer Brewery: Beer from spring water on stadt-wien.at, accessed on October 16, 2018.
  17. ↑ 20th anniversary: ​​SK Rapid and Ottakringer present special edition on 90minuten.at from February 17, 2015, accessed on October 16, 2018.
  18. ↑ Ottakringer unofficial fan beer FAN-TASTISCH presentation in PRODUKT magazine, issue 03/2008
  19. ↑ The beer for fans Article on derStandard.at (online edition) of May 28, 2008, last accessed on May 28, 2020
  20. ↑ Beer: How brewers nibble on the EM cake Article on DiePresse.com (online edition) of February 29, 2008, last accessed on May 28, 2020
  21. ↑ Beer scandal at the EURO article in Austria (newspaper) (online edition) of April 5, 2008, last accessed on May 28, 2020
  22. ↑ Ottakringer official beer sponsor of Vienna Capitals on vienna-capitals.at from September 10, 2011, accessed on October 16, 2018.

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 43 ″  N , 16 ° 19 ′ 26 ″  E