Nordzucker Plant Based Ingredients

Ground-breaking ceremony with Minister Staudte in Groß Munzel

14-Nov-2024

Nordzucker's Plant Based Ingredients division celebrated the official ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a new plant in Groß Munzel. Guests from politics and business were also present. The new plant will start producing plant-based proteins in mid-2026 and create around 60 new jobs.

Miriam Staudte, Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in Lower Saxony, together with Claus-Friso Gellermann, Managing Director of Nordzucker Plant Based Ingredients GmbH, and the Executive Board of Nordzucker AG, gave the starting signal for the construction site of the future plant with a courageous grip on the spade. "More and more people are reducing their meat consumption, eating a vegan or vegetarian diet, which means that plant-based foods are gaining market share. This is a good thing, as it helps to protect the climate and enables agricultural diversification. Plant proteins are an important business segment for the agricultural and food industry. More farms wanted to supply the new plant than could be accepted. This is an impressive signal of the great willingness of agriculture to transform. I welcome the fact that a traditional company like Nordzucker is investing in the future here in Lower Saxony," commented Minister Staudte at the ground-breaking ceremony.

The future pea protein factory is being built on the site of Nordzucker's former liquid sugar plant and will cover an area of around 8,000 square meters. Completion and commissioning of the plant is planned for mid-2026. Claus-Friso Gellermann, Managing Director of Nordzucker Plant Based Ingredients GmbH, emphasized: "The ground-breaking ceremony for our factory in Groß Munzel is a key milestone for us in producing concentrate and dry texturate from pea proteins for further processing in the food and animal feed industry from 2026. For the first contract cultivation for 2025, demand from farmers significantly exceeded our requirements - great feedback from the agricultural sector." As a field crop, the yellow-seeded pea fits well into many crop rotations thanks to its ability to collect nitrogen for subsequent crops.

"Plant-based nutrition - a megatrend that matches our expertise"

Plant-based nutrition is playing an increasingly important role and the market is growing rapidly. Germany is by far the largest market for plant-based foods in Europe and is extending its lead even further. According to a market study by GFI Europe, the German market for plant-based alternative products also grew by eight percent to a new record of 2.2 billion euros in 2023. "The increasing importance of plant-based nutrition shows that we have identified a promising growth market close to agriculture," said Lars Gorissen, Chief Executive Officer at Nordzucker, explaining the company's commitment to the plant-based protein business. "The investment of more than EUR 100 million in the new Plant Based Ingredients business segment is an important step into the future for us. With the new pea protein factory and in cooperation with pea-growing farmers, we are ideally equipped to play an active role in shaping this megatrend."

Strategically favorable location with potential

The new pea protein production plant will include a building for receiving peas and taking samples, a production building, a day warehouse and 16 silos for storing peas. "Groß Munzel impresses with its good transport links - we are already familiar with the local infrastructure and feel connected to the Calenberg region. We also have good access to yellow peas as a raw material from many arable farming regions in northern Germany. We focus on sustainability and regionality in order to offer our customers high-quality products," says Alexander Godow, Chief Operating Officer at Nordzucker and responsible for this business unit. Nordzucker is creating 60 new jobs with the construction of the plant for the production of pea protein.

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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