Stern-Wywiol Gruppe achieves record sales, drives company ambition for far-sighted growth

07 Jun 2018 --- Hamburg-based food and feed ingredients supplier, Stern-Wywiol Gruppe, increased its sales by €56 million (US$66 million) to €520 million (US$613 million) in 2017. With this figure, the company achieved 12 percent growth last year. The development of the group is mainly due to the expansion of its international presence and intensive applications research, according to Stern-Wywiol Gruppe.

This has also led to the group being rated as one of Germany’s Top Twenty most innovative medium-sized enterprises. Worldwide, the group has over 1,300 employees, 920 of them in Germany. This, too, represents a significant increase.

The Stern-Wywiol Gruppe is made up of twelve independent specialist firms in Germany that develop, manufacture and distribute functional ingredients for the production of food and animal feed. They include internationally well-known companies such as Hydrosol, Mühlenchemie, SternMaid, SternVitamin, Sternchemie, SternEnzym, HERZA Schokolade and Berg+Schmidt.

Each firm has a high level of competence in its particular field, with experts from industry and research, for example in baked goods and pasta, dairy products, deli foods, meat, fish, chocolate, and also flavorings, lecithin, enzymes and vitamins. All the companies’ activities revolve around applications research at the Stern-Technology Center “Futuremaker” in Ahrensburg, near Hamburg, where each of the specialist firms has access to the pooled knowledge and skills of the whole group. 85 percent of the goods sold by the independently operating companies are exported to customers in over 130 countries. 

In many branches of the food industry, the specialist units have become world market leaders, for example when it comes to standardizing the staple food “flour” with the aid of enzymes, fortifying foods with micronutrients or developing customized stabilizing systems for dairy products, deli foods or meat products.

With 16 affiliates abroad, each of which has a profound knowledge of the region and in some cases research facilities and production capacity of its own, the group secures access to the most important markets. 

CEO Torsten Wywiol has pushed ahead with this far-sighted strategy together with the managers of the individual companies. Last year, for example, a total of €20 million (US$23.5 million) was invested in the enlargement of production capacities and the broad range of applications research. In this connection, particular emphasis was placed on extending the international network. New applications laboratories in Africa, Asia and America, bring the employees even closer to their customers and can develop tailor-made solutions in cooperation with them on the spot. 

“A management concept based on equality and flexible structures: these are what constitute the DNA of our group. They are the source of the exceptional, innovative power that distinguishes us from the major corporations in the international market for food and feed,” says Wywiol. 

“We need creativity, and we encourage it specifically,” he adds, who manages the group of companies as its CEO in the second generation. 

To continue this positive development, the group intends to invest a further €42 million (US$49.5 million) in enlarging research and production capacities in Germany and abroad in the next two years. For 2018, Torsten Wywiol is expecting a further increase in sales to about €570 million (US$672 million).

Stern-Wywiol Gruppe is eyeing strong potential in the nutritional space, with emerging platforms such as vegan being targeted. Last month, at this year’s Vitafoods in Geneva, their SternVitamin business presented micronutrient premixes that address individual consumer wishes.

FoodIngredientsFirst spoke to Stern-Wywiol CEO Torsten Wywiol about the outlook and opportunities that exist in the nutrition sector. You can view the video interview with Wywiol here.