Sven Mattutat, Global Head of Product Management at Mühlenchemie shares with Editor Caitlin Gittins their responsibility and challenge at making sure enough people are fed
Please introduce yourself and your role at Mühlenchemie?
As Global Head of Product Management, I see two key issues: First to recognise the right products and topics for our customers in order to develop Mühlenchemie (MC) products that add value to the millers’ flour.
The second focus is on the optimisation of our MC portfolio. As a company with production sites all over the world, we face the challenge of linking all our sites in a meaningful way in order to produce faster and more cost-effective solutions.
When I started at MC in 2010, we were made of up three to four colleagues for the entire African continent. The first few years were along the lines of, “just get it done” and resembled a spirit of optimism. In the second phase, as head of the International R&D team, the first global tasks were added to my responsibilities. Since 2020, I have been working in the third phase in strategic product management and am responsible for the current but also for the future MC flour treatment portfolio.
Last year you celebrated your 100-year anniversary. In that time, what have been major milestones for the business?
2023 was a “power year” for all MC employees. We all waited so long for this moment, and then it happened.
For the major milestones, this included the takeover of MC by Mr Volkmar Wywiol in 1990; the relocation from Frankfurt to Ahrensburg near Hamburg; the expansion of the Technology Centre in Ahrensburg at the turn of the millennium and the opening of the first foreign branches in Mexico and Co.
In the last decade, this has been recognising markets and always being there when it was important! We’ve always been working together with the best colleagues and our customers. The time we spent together has always been respectful and passionate. At least that’s how I’ve experienced and lived it over the last 14 years.
The Innovation Award was launched in commemoration of 100 years. Could you talk about how this came about, and what the results were?
We wanted to draw attention to the challenges of feeding eight billion people with the most important staple food. The world population grows by 1 billion people every 12 years, and at some point the amount of wheat will no longer be enough to feed everyone. That’s why we launched this award.
We were surprised to see that many parts of the world are already researching alternative “non-wheat” flours.
The winner came from South Africa, Mr Yusuf Kewuyemi. His work deals with African legume cowpea-based composite bioprocessed flour and its resultant wholegrain and multigrain three-dimensional (3D) printed biscuits.
Feeding the world is a vision of Mühlenchemie’s. What does this signify and how are you looking to drive this forward?
As MC, we are represented on all continents. As a result, our products reach millions of tonnes of flour to make good flours even better.
Working together with the millers of this world..
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Media contact
Caitlin Gittins
Editor, International Bakery
Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 920
Email: editor@in-bakery.com
