Staying cool in the summer

At the start of the year, DMK sold the Waldfeucht-Haaren ice cream production site (Heinsberg, in North Rhine Westphalia) to the Schwarz Group (Lidl). Pending approval by the regulatory authorities, the transition is due to be completed at the start of 2021, and includes the new owner taking on 200 employees. We asked Marcus- Dominic Hauck, COO Ice Cream, about how the optimization of DMK‘s production network is going.

We are renovating an older building, with all the problems that entails, and we are right on time for our schedule. Despite the coronavirus and many other difficulties, employees are showing a huge level of commitment and daily production is running smoothly. The floors and walls were taken out, new foundations were laid and the tilers are at work right now. We started using the machines that were there in March and now, a large and a small ice lolly machine, two of the most modern in Europe, are being set up and we put the new sandwich line in the former milk area. The first few employees are being trained and if things continue like this, the test phase will follow. That means we‘ll be able to start producing ice cream on sticks, in tubs and in cones as of January.

We‘re increasing production capacity in Everswinkel from 65 million liters of ice cream to 100 million liters, meaning we‘ll be producing the same amount of ice cream as we were doing before in two locations.