Stern-Wywiol reports sales up 12% YoY

12 Jun 2018

The continuing positive development of the family business is due, the company says, very largely to expansion of its international presence and intensive applications research.

In 2017, Stern-Wywiol increased its sales by €56 million to €520 million – 12% up on the previous year. The continuing positive development of the family business is due, the company says, very largely to expansion of its international presence and intensive applications research. Worldwide, the group has over 1,300 employees, 920 of them in Germany. This, too, represents an appreciable increase.

The Stern-Wywiol Gruppe is made up of 12 independent specialist firms in Germany that develop, manufacture and distribute functional ingredients for the production of food and animal feed. They include Hydrosol, Mühlenchemie, SternMaid, SternVitamin, Sternchemie, SternEnzym, HERZA Schokolade and Berg+Schmidt. 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 through a network of excellence. 85% of the goods sold by the independently operating companies are exported to customers in over 130 countries.

“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”, said CEO Torsten Wywiol.

“We need creativity, and we encourage it specifically,” said Wywiol. He sees the basis for this in a large measure of freedom for the individual employee.

In order to continue this positive development, the group says it intends to invest a further €42 million in enlarging research and production capacities in Germany and abroad in the next two years. For the current year, Wywiol is expecting a further increase in sales to about €570 million.