General company information

❖ Central office: Rheda-Wiedenbrück

❖ Foundation: 1971

❖ Number of employees: 16,500 (2018)

❖ Sales: 6.65 billion euros (2018), 2019 over 7 billion euros for the first time

❖ Production locations: 29 worldwide, sales locations: 19 (e.g. China, Russia, Romania)

❖ Export: Tönnies exports worldwide (proportion about 50%). Main markets abroad: Russia & increasingly Asia

❖ Import: about 30000 pigs are slaughtered daily, the majority of the slaughter pigs come from the Netherlands.

❖ Slaughterings/year: 2016: 20.4 million pigs worldwide, of which 16.2 million were in Germany

❖ Total market shares: 30.3% → Market leader

❖ Licenses: Companies in Weißenfels & Rheda-Wiedenbrück have licenses for the EU and Japan. In addition, the factory in Rheda-Wiedenbrück fulfils the hygiene regulations for exports to Europe, Asia, USA, Australia & South Africa

 

Product portfolio

❖ Germany's largest slaughterhouse for pigs

❖ Meat processing and refinement

❖ Meat products are sold in discount stores (Aldi, Lidl) but also in REWE stores (e.g. Landjunker)

❖ Product range from the pork half to the finished cordon bleu

❖ Meat Pork & Beef: frozen and fresh meat (850 tonnes/year)

❖ Convenience - Tillman's (Europe's specialist for frozen convenience and fresh self-service packaged meat)

❖ Sausages: Sausage processing (zur Mühlen Gruppe, e.g. Gutfried, Hareico)

❖ Ingredients: Protein, fat & flour is supplied to the pharmaceutical, food and feed industries 

 

Challenges

❖ Poor staff conditions ("staff camps") - Prohibition of work contracts

❖ Bad relationship between owners

❖ Corona crisis: infected employees - growing media criticism

 

Strategies

❖ Consumer transparency through purchase agreements (app "fTrace" → Trace back where the animal comes from) and increase partnership with agricultural suppliers (contractual commitment - 5 pillars: animal health, welfare, sustainability, quality and transparency → Goal: increase consumer confidence). Advantages for farmers: more planning security, various payment models, bonuses. Criticism: Tönnies secures increasingly scarce supply of slaughter pigs and can track valuable data)

❖ Internationalisation strategy - Goal: to be economically stable and future-proof on different markets in order not to be too strongly affected by internationally fluctuating price developments → EU, East Asian market, Philippines, Mexico

❖ Internationalisation - Tönnies & Russia - Pig stock in Russia increased by 30% since 2012, largest investor in pig farming is Tönnies → Foundation of the subsidiary "Don" in 2007. Tönnies and Putin maintain a good relationship.

❖ Internationalisation - production slaughterhouse in China 2020 - Construction of a slaughter and cutting centre in Sichuan according to European standards → China benefits from know-how about food production according to German standards, quality and security of supply.

❖ Sustainability - Revolution in fresh meat packaging - Flow-pack packaging: per packaging unit up to 70% plastic & up to 60% CO2 are saved. Packaging consists of 100% recycled film.

❖Sustainability & animal welfare: Agenda t30 - Pork production should be more sustainable. Tönnies formulates concrete goals for suppliers: Reduction of antibiotics, amount of nitrate, abandonment of soya from South America & palm oil. By 2030, the proportion of animals from super-legal forms of husbandry should increase to 70% → Company wants to support the construction of 500 animal welfare stables

❖ Tönnies Livestock - Tönnies enters the cattle trade. Tönnies Livestock will help to meet the requirements of chain-wide systems to improve food safety, quality and animal health.  → Vertical Integration