Strategic realignment

The Haus Cramer Group opens up for new business areas

15-Feb-2023 - Germany

Brewery Group restructures and opens up to new business areas
Beverage portfolio to grow, further cooperations planned
services, also for external companies, e.g. in the field of logistics
Substantial investments: approx. 200 million euros in the next two years

The Warsteiner Group is strategically realigning itself and, with this step, opening itself up to new areas of business. This involves a restructuring of the owner-managed private brewery. From now on, the company will operate as the Haus Cramer Group. In the future, the business will involve more than the production and sale of beer brands. The entrepreneurial focus will be expanded to include other beverage types to round out the portfolio. It includes cooperations with other strong brands and aims to achieve even higher capacity utilization at the company's own breweries and further strengthen its international business. In addition, the Group offers various services - also for outside companies. Furthermore, investments in promising start-ups are being examined and cooperations with other companies are being initiated to leverage synergies.

"In the future, we will no longer see ourselves as a pure beer company, but will open up to all business areas that are needed in the catering industry and by consumers," says Helmut Hörz, CEO & CFO and Chairman of the Management Board of Haus Cramer Group. "This will make us even more attractive for our partners in the catering industry, but also for our end customers. We want to accompany people throughout the day with beverage solutions." In the future, the new corporate structure will be based on the pillars of Production, Investments, Supply Chain, Marketing & Sales, Shared Services, and Brands & Licenses. In addition, the Haus Cramer Group intends to invest around 200 million euros in the next two years in new employees, the brands, a forward-looking IT infrastructure, and in machinery and concrete.
The foundation stone for the strategic realignment has already been laid in recent weeks and months.

Production: The plan for the future is to combine the core business of the Haus Cramer Group, the production of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, and to unite all operating sites under this roof.

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Investments: This is where the investment business is bundled. Among other things, at the end of last year the Haus Cramer Group acquired a minority interest in the Irish Rye River Brewing Company, a brewery for specialty beers based in Dublin. This further expanded the range of products for the retail and food service sectors. At the end of the year, for example, the Haus Cramer Group took a stake in the German beverage start-up hye, which offers so-called flavoured functional water in four varieties. These innovative beverages represent a promising and growing category in the food market. Further investments will follow.

Supply Chain: The Supply Chain business unit includes BOXX Intermodal Logistics, founded in September 2021, which offers other companies transport services from its own siding in Warstein to Munich, Berlin, Hamburg or Verona using trains operated by Westfälische Landes-Eisenbahn (WLE) and in cooperation with DB Cargo. This makes the container hub at the Warstein location interesting also for customers from outside the industry who are looking for supply-secure transport alternatives.

The sales organization surrounding the distribution and marketing of all beverages: business has developed extremely positively recently and has grown much faster than the market. In order to continue the upward trend, the Warsteiner brand, among others, is undergoing a repositioning, which is also visible in a completely new advertising campaign.

Since June last year, the Haus Cramer Group has already been distributing the Spanish beer Estrella Galicia in Germany, which became internationally famous thanks to the Netflix series "House of Money." In August, gastronomy distribution for the Berlin-based brewer BrewDog was added, adding further beer specialties to the domestic portfolio.

H. C. Drinks Solutions GmbH was founded at the beginning of February this year. The subsidiary will offer other beverage companies a comprehensive end-to-end range of services from bottling to transportation. The first customers have already been acquired for the new company. As of February, a well-known foreign food retailer is already sourcing a selection of its products from Warstein in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Shared Services: Following antitrust approval, the Beverage Group and Karlsberg Getränke Verbund are joining forces and founding a joint, independent purchasing company. The focus here is on optimum supply to customers and improved purchasing and delivery conditions.

Trademarks & Licenses: A separate company is also planned for the brand and licensing rights of the Haus Cramer Group. This is intended to offer breweries abroad in particular the opportunity to brew beer varieties of the group under license more efficiently and thus further promote the internationalization of the brand.

"The Haus Cramer Group is only at the beginning of a long journey," says Helmut Hörz. "Compared to a marathon, I would say we have just covered the first few kilometers and are already very much looking forward to the next steps."

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.

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