A. Moksel AG - Founding and Steady Growth After World War II

Founding and Steady Growth After World War II

In 1948 Alexander Moksel built a slaughterhouse in Buchloe, a town of several thousand located about 40 miles west of Munich. The slaughterhouse was favorably situated close to producers in an area known for the quality of its livestock. The "Alexander Moksel Grossschlächterei, Fleisch-Wurstund Konservenfabrik" slaughtered and produced meat and sausage, as well as trading locally in meat and livestock. Because livestock did not have to travel far to the slaughterhouse, Moksel expected that he would be able to produce a higher-quality product than the meat that came from slaughterhouses in urban centers.

A decade after its founding Moksel had annual revenues of DM 9 million. Around 1957 the company expanded its trading business and began importing meat from Austria into Bavaria. As imports grew, Moksel achieved revenues of DM 30 million in 1964. That year, Moksel started exporting meat more extensively, particularly to Italy. In the early 1970s the company developed export markets in Eastern Europe as well. In 1970 annual revenues reached DM 130 million.

Five years later Moksel had nearly doubled in size again. It branched out into new areas of the meat industry, buying a stake in a refrigerating and cutting plant. More acquisitions followed in the later 1970s: Moksel took over an importing and exporting concern in Hamburg known as Peter Paulsen as well as a trading company in Berlin. The company was becoming more vertically integrated and could now offer storage and logistics services in addition to slaughtering and trading. With the new subsidiaries, net revenue rose from DM 235 million in 1974 to DM 1 billion in 1980. That year Moksel formally divided its business activities into separate production and trading branches. While beef remained Moksel's most profitable product, the company acquired subsidiaries that dealt in breeding cattle, fine meat cuts, and wild game.

Moksel's expanded activities had outgrown its original headquarters by the mid-1980s. In 1984 the company began construction of a new slaughterhouse in Buchloe and opened the facility a year later. In addition to state-of-the-art slaughtering capabilities, the facility was designed to accommodate extensive refrigerated and frozen storage capacity. Cattle from all over southern Bavaria met their demise at the Buchloe slaughterhouse. In 1986 Moksel also acquired a slaughterhouse in Furth im Wald, a city northeast of Munich in an area known for its quality cattle. The longstanding Furth slaughterhouse was in need of an investor to modernize it to meet new requirements. Moksel spent DM 3 million to bring the facility up to speed.