Leipzig. For a long time it had calmed around the halloran balls. The company had to find itself under its new American boss and chief boss Darren Ehlert. But now Halle’s traditional company is back on stage with its passionate entrepreneur – and at a Germany-wide roadshow in central Germany, Berlin and the Ruhr region.
Six Holoran brand Trabis tours to selected supermarkets and wholesalers to introduce new products, chocolate bars and cocoa balls. Darren Ehlert made his official debut at the self-service wholesaler in Leipzig on Monday. He rolled into his red-designed residential truck on Monday morning, which he had specially converted a few years earlier. Trabis had already been to Dresden and Radeburg.
© Peter Endig
The American with Canadian roots has steadily acquired shares in Germany’s oldest chocolate factory since 2014. After Paul Morczynski – the 1992 founding father and major shareholder who was considered the “King of Halloran” for 25 years – withdrew from the company and sold his shares to Ehlert, the manager became the main owner, though he went on to press Were more reluctant.
“We have achieved the turnaround”
But in the meantime, the 47-year-old real estate expert temporarily redirected the ailing Halle company out of the red and brought it back on track. He also owns a Delitzsch chocolate factory with about 290 employees and is now flourishing again. In 2019, Halloran sold approximately EUR 27 million and had approximately 220 employees. Some more figures are to be published recently.
“We’ve achieved a turnaround,” Ehlert now reveals from Leipziger Volkezitung. The business graduate, who had no previous experience with confectionery producers, pursued a career as a manager in the “Global Real Estate Finance Group” of the latter’s bankrupt US investment bank Lehman Brothers until 2005.
But he has lived in Westphalia since 2006 with his wife and four children and is involved in the real estate business there. The fact that the newcomer is now going so aggressively in public with chocolate and showing off the flag as the Hollowayne owner is a new development. (svh)
