NXG PR OFILE
ownership of the company. It resulted in years of fighting between Werner Michael, his brother, and Andrea’s widower Gisbert van Nordek, over company management and leadership. The much-publicised struggle eventually
led to the tripartite division of the group in 1999. Werner Michael kept control of the family’s iconic Bahlsen brand, Lorenz left to establish snacks-based company Snacks-World, and van Nordek was handed control of Bahlsen’s Austrian and Swiss subsidiaries, Bahlsen GmbH and Kelly. Then the families ostracised each other. Still to this day, the families do not speak. “My father was super concerned the
same thing would happen to us so he gave the company to us really early,” she says. Aware that he and his children were
getting older, at the end of 2015, Werner- Michael gathered his family together to talk about the succession process. “He said over the next couple of years
I want to talk to you guys about how this transition will go legally—not who runs the company, but what we want to do with this company in the long run, starting with purpose,” she says.
Top:
HERMANN’S hosts workshops to get the public to rethink nutrition,
products and supply chains
Below: Bahlsen’s father, Werner Michael, keen to avoid the same succession issues he faced, handed ownership of the family business to Verena at the age of just 13
“So we explored why Hermann [Bahlsen’s great-
grandfather and founder of the company] built this company when he did, what beliefs it was built on, and if we can transition those beliefs to today in the same way.” The answers Bahlsen gathered during that family
meeting turned out to be the turning point for her and a lightning rod for her creative side. “I found out Hermann was not a baker—which sounds
like a banal fact, but it was a huge discovery for me—I grew up being told that I come from generations of bakers, but that was total bulls**t,” she says. In fact, Hermann Bahlsen was a merchant who travelled
around the world in the 1890s, finding ideas for products, technologies, and businesses. All the ideas he found he would bring back to his factory in Hanover, including installing a conveyor belt system he had seen abattoirs use in Chicago’s meat packing industry. “Hermann was brilliant at finding, and I thought if we
do not assume we have a company for baking anymore, instead we can have a company that is brilliant at finding opportunities and using those opportunities to grow as a business,” she says. “It meant that from then on we could align our
organisation, the people that work here, and our long-term strategy on finding instead of just baking. “I found that super exciting.”
Big ideas Newly armed with the real history of Hermann and all the possibilities it opened up for her, Bahlsen’s interest in the family business was starting to pique. Problem was, she was stuck in London, bored with the business management course she was studying at King’s College University. That’s
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CAMPDENFB.COM ISSUE 75 | 2019
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