Success Story: Kampsen GmbH & Co. KG

Success Story: Kampsen GmbH & Co. KG

State-of-the-art production facilities coupled with traditional recipes

Kampsen GmbH & Co. KG, located in the Lower Saxony town of Cloppenburg, produces meat, sausage and convenience products, primarily for in-house brands of large retail customers.

Handtmann FS 520:
"The main advantage with these lines is that we can work very flexibly and the weights are always correct."
Stephan Witte, CEO of Kampsen GmbH & Co. KG

Kampsen GmbH & Co. KG, located in the Lower Saxony town of Cloppenburg, produces meat, sausage and convenience products, primarily for in-house brands of large retail customers. Founded as a meat deli in the town centre more than 40 years ago, an additional expansion to the 14,000 m² production area is currently being completed. 285 employees produce approximately 17,000 tons of sausages, rissoles and meat products per year – and this figure is continuing to rise. State-of-the-art production facilities coupled with traditional recipes are the company’s response to the demands from discounters, food retailers, the food service industry and the catering sector.

There are two identically designed production units that are totally independent of each other, to make sure that everything works like clockwork. On the one hand, this facilitates the required product type purity and, on the other hand, protects against shutdowns in the even of faults. But emergency work is not needed anyway as the service is excellent, affirms Stephan Witte, Managing Director of Kampsen GmbH & Co. KG, in an interview with Holger Herrmann, Handtmann Key Account Manager. In 2018, Stephan Witte was named “Businessperson of the Year” in the Oldenburg Land region for transforming Kampsen from a small-scale company to a large industrial plant.

Interview

with Stephan Witte, CEO of Kampsen GmbH & Co. KG

Stephan Witte: The maintenance is superb, they always attend to our machines quickly. Spare parts management also works well – replacement parts can be delivered within 45 minutes if they are in stock. Our technicians and the Handtmann service staff communicate very well when something is faulty or if it is possible to solve a problem without any red tape. This works very, very well. The relationship is very cooperative.

 Currently, 65 percent are sausage products and 35 percent are therefore formed products. The proportion of formed products is definitely increasing – the demand is enormous and we can respond accordingly. At the moment, we produce approximately 200 tonnes on two lines. 40 percent are meat balls.

 The main advantage with these lines is that we can work very flexibly and the weights are always correct. The balls can sometimes be large and sometimes small and the shapes can vary. Various types of sausage meat contract differently in the fryer. Sometimes the customer wants sticks and sometimes balls, depending on the recipe that is needed. You just have to enter this into the forming system and it works.

Yes, it did. We started up as a butchery shop in the town centre and then we grew step by step. In 2001, we still had a staff of 35. We purchased the first Handtmann machines in 2010 and then one or two new ones every year.

The systems work very, very reliably and high speed production really does mean high speed at our plant. A great deal is thus demanded of the machines. But everything works really well and very reliably, every day. The machines are assembled and they function properly straight away. Handtmann machines can be understood by all the employees and they are very easy to set up by the staff themselves.

 We were never able to accurately tell how high the give-away really is. Now we know what the ideal machine settings are. We can track a lot of things more effectively and control the data that is used in the calculations. We started using the HCU in 2012.

 Yes, we use the documentation to see how well which team has carried out the filling process, how the casings are and so on…

 Commissioning the HCU happens like this: you plug it in, finished. There is actually no need to contact the support staff because the system runs properly. It works, it runs well. Just as it should do.