Torsten Wywiol and Volkmar Wywiol.

HAMBURG, GERMANY —Stern-Wywiol Gruppe announced on April 14 it had achieved record sales of €444 million ($505 million) in 2015 – resulting in 12% growth for the business. The number of employees in Germany and abroad rose to nearly 1,000. The company plans to continue this positive development in the growing international market for food and feed ingredients with investments of €25 million in the next two years.

The Stern-Wywiol Gruppe comprises 11 independent specialist firms in Germany which develop, produce and market functional ingredients for the production of food and feed. They include Hydrosol, Mühlenchemie, SternMaid, SternVitamin, Sternchemie, SternEnzym, HERZA Schokolade and Berg+Schmidt. Each company has specific competence in a particular field, for instance bakery or dairy products, deli foods, meat, fish, chocolate, flavorings, lecithin, enzymes or vitamins.


“This special, customer-friendly structure is the basis of our innovative power and our success,” said Torsten Wywiol, chief executive officer. “Our diversified and flexible production system and our intensive applications research enable us to develop and sell product solutions tailor-made to individual customers. That is how we were able to assert ourselves against the big corporations in the international ingredients market again last year and achieve above-average growth across all the units.” 

With an export share of over 80%, the independently operating companies supply customers in more than 100 countries in all of the continents, the company said. Fifteen foreign affiliates with a specific knowledge of their region, and in some cases research and production facilities of their own, ensure the group access to the most important markets.

The group said it will invest another €25 million in enlarging research and production capacities in Germany and abroad over the next two years. New food technologists and sales staff will also be taken on for these functions in Hamburg and abroad. This, Wywiol said, will create a basis for continued growth of the group and a sales target of €470 million in 2016.