Magdeburg Cooking box supplier HelloFresh is building a new production facility in Barleben (Borde district) near Magdeburg. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in mid-May and the first cooking boxes were to be shipped in the fourth quarter of 2022. With the new location, HelloFresh will more than double the volume of previous production in Germany and Austria, according to the company.
In Barleben, production, storage and office space is being built on over 35,000 square metres. HelloFresh announced that it will create 1500 “safe and lucrative” jobs. A company spokesperson said they are now looking for a site manager, a technical manager, a senior facility manager and a process engineer. For the logistics sector, the order takers will be hired from the second quarter of next year.
HelloFresh claims to be the world’s leading supplier of Cooking Boxes operating in 14 countries around the world. In the first quarter of 2021, the cooking box supplier delivered more than 239 million meals. According to its own information, the company has approximately 7.3 million active customers worldwide. HelloFresh was founded in Berlin in November 2011 and went public in Frankfurt in November 2017. HelloFresh achieved sales of EUR 3.75 billion in 2020, up from EUR 1.8 billion in 2019.
“With this investment, we see ourselves in the best possible position for the future,” says Nils Herrmann, HaloFresh Managing Director for the German-Speaking Region (DACH). It will serve “continued strong” customer growth in Germany and Austria. They want to “increase both the number of recipes available per week and the number of additional products available in the future.”
According to the announcement, the new building in Barleben will meet HelloFresh’s “high sustainability standards.” They state that a high-performance photovoltaic system would largely cover the site’s energy needs.
The company did not provide any information on the quantum of investment in the new location. According to the spokesperson, HelloFresh plans to invest 150 million euros in the expansion of logistics around the world in 2021.
Barleben’s mayor, Frank Naas, describes the settlement as “an absolute stroke of luck for Magdeburg and the Barleben region”.
