A. Moksel AG - Continued Expansion As a Public Company: 1987–92

Continued Expansion As a Public Company: 1987–92

After 40 years of growth and acquisitions, Moksel was ripe for a public offering. By 1987, the firm's subsidiaries included seven trading concerns in Buchloe, Munich, Hamburg, Dortmund, and Madrid, Spain; slaughterhouses in Buchloe, Furth im Wald, Regensburg, Berlin, and Bordertown, Australia; refrigeration operations in Nuremberg, Buchloe, and Fallingbostel; and processing plants in Berlin and Germaringen, all in addition to the original Moksel concern with trading, storage, and slaughtering operations in Buchloe. The entire group employed about 880 people, 220 of them at the central facilities in Buchloe. Net revenues for the group in 1986 were about DM 1.4 billion, with slightly more than 60 percent of revenues coming from livestock trading operations and the remainder from meat slaughtering, storage, and processing.

In preparation for the initial public offering (IPO), Moksel combined its two parent companies—the slaughtering branch and the trading branch—into one entity, Alexander Moksel Schlachtbetreibe, Import-Export GmbH u. Co. KG. In June 1987 that entity was restructured into A. Moksel AG. In October the company offered DM 24.9 million, just under half of its base capital, for sale on the Frankfurt and Munich stock exchanges.

Moksel nearly tripled its size in the few years after the IPO. After a period of stagnant exports due to international overproduction, trade picked up again in 1988 and exports accounted for the majority of the firm's proceeds. In 1987 the company renovated slaughterhouses in Regensburg and Berlin and founded a breeding cattle company in Munich to take advantage of demand from countries that were beginning to develop their milk and meat industries. A trading company was founded in Regensburg in 1989 and construction began on a new slaughterhouse in Gelsenkirchen. In 1990 the company acquired a majority share in Fleischzentrale Südwest GmbH, a slaughterhouse in Crailsheim near Stuttgart, and founded the EGN Erzeugergemeinschaft für Qualitätsfleisch slaughterhouse in Vilshofen east of Munich.

In the late 1980s, Moksel began to increase its activity in the area of meat processing. By 1987 revenues from the processing sector had reached DM 579 million. The following year Moksel introduced a line of exclusive certified meat under the name "Almox premium." The brand name indicated that the livestock came only from certain longtime partners who met strict criteria. The livestock was then slaughtered and stored in a way that would preserve its high quality and freshness. Group sales in 1991 were about DM 4 billion. In the fall of 1992 company founder Alexander Moksel sold his 34 percent stake in the company to the März family, owners of a fellow German meat company.