OV Hans Kaspar is located in Switzerland, 20 minutes drive from Zurich, in a village called Zufikon. Step outside the front door of the factory and you’re almost out into the fields of a beautiful river valley – 10 minutes’ walk from the historic old town of Bremgarten.
The company began life in 1925 when it was located in the city of Zurich and manufactured margarines, cooking fats and semi-finished products for Swiss bakeries. The move to Zufikon was driven by high property rental prices within the city and also by an almost total change of product and customer base.
CHANGING FOR THE FUTURE
Stephan Gächter has been Managing Director at Hans Kaspar for 16 years. Prior to that he rose up through the ranks where he’s always kept both eyes on processes and possibilities.
Stephan explains the change that took place in the noughties: “Between 2006 and 2014 we changed completely from being a supplier of semi-finished products to Swiss bakeries, to supplying direct to industrial producers of chocolates, ice cream and biscuits.”
The catalyst for this change was a marked drop in the numbers of Swiss bakeries over time: down from 3500 in 1990 to around 1800 in 2006. Stephan adds: “Now we are at around 1200 in Switzerland. The less bakeries, the less volume, the less market. The behaviour of all consumers is changing – we had to change too. Or the company will die.”
And change came on an impressive scale, with investment in production lines for the new customer base allowing the company to make the leap outside Switzerland and into markets in Europe, particularly Germany and France.
European customers now make up 57% of the Hans Kaspar customer base, 38% still in Switzerland, 3% in the US and 2% elsewhere.
NUT SPECIALISTS
One of the standout capabilities of Hans Kaspar within the OV group, which they joined in 2021, is their ability to create stunning nut-based products. Many OV sites are nut-free, but through Hans Kaspar we’re able to offer customers looking for nut-based products strong solutions.
The experts who run the Hans Kaspar manufacturing lines know how to roast nuts slowly from the inside out to retain the best flavours; they understand how to work with nuts to create specific brittle sprinkles, and how to chocolate coat different types of nuts to meet customer needs.
Stephan adds: “There has been a trend to be nut free but we do not want to be nut free. For the future I just can’t see a market without nuts. They are very healthy, they are a distinctive taste and they work well in combination with other ingredients and flavours – into ice cream, into chocolate, into biscuits, yoghurt and more.”
KEY PRODUCT AREAS
The factory at OV Hans Kaspar works across four key production areas:
- hard caramel sprinkles (partly based on nuts),
- brittle sprinkles (mostly based on nuts),
- natural flavouring pastes (caramels, nut, coffee, etc.),
- chocolate coated items.
And the team create a lot of tailor-made recipes combining these different specialties to craft unique products for large industrial clients with orders of 1-25 tonnes.
Stephan says: “With the chocolate coated items, for example, we produce our own quality lecithin-free Swiss chocolate and then we spray this in coating drums and use it to cover e.g. our own sprinkles or caramel splinters to create a unique product. I do not know anyone else who can do all that in their own company.
“We live Swiss quality thinking. We take time, use the right raw materials, keeping promises and deadlines and hiring only skilled staff who are educated in food. That makes a big difference to our customers because we solve all problems for them and get it right first time. Together with our customers, we create the very best ingredients to go onto or into their final products”.
Get in touch if you have a question about a special recipe product you want to create in large quantities and let us make the difference together!
