Hermine Wech

It was the turmoil after the war which led to the foundation of the Wech company. Anything but falling into the hands of the Russians, thought sisters Hermine and Germana as they fled from the Red Army, and so they finally reached Lavanttal. True, the strong Lavanttal dialect sounded very strange to the Lower Austrian sisters, so Lavanttal was originally only meant to be a temporary stop. However, history has shown time and again that things often turn out differently than expected, and so the sisters finally ended up at the Wech farm, where they were much in demand as graduates of agricultural colleges.

Shortly afterwards, Hermine married the young farmer Otto Wech, and they built a house on the so-called Hasenflüchter estate. They cultivated garden strawberries and kept bees. Entrepreneurial thinking must have been in Hermine Wech’s blood, and even then, she saw that there was a market opening for the sale of fresh poultry.

In 1956, the Wechs started business with nine Leghorn hens and one rooster. However, this was a false start, because after attending the obligatory church service one Sunday, they came home to find that a fox had consumed the entire flock as a Sunday feast. Nevertheless, they didn’t give up; their first broiler chickens were reared in the cellar and attic and were sold to acquaintances living nearby from a fruit crate mounted on a motor scooter.

The space in and around the house soon became too small, and so in 1958, they began discussions with farmers in the vicinity. Hermine Wech promised the farmers a good price and guaranteed sales for the fattened poultry. In principle, that was the foundation of the company today known as Wech-Geflügel. A poultry dealer in Klagenfurt guaranteed to take 200 to 300 poultry every week. This enabled Hermine to keep her promise to the farmers. However, at that time they were still using traditional slaughtering methods and the plucking, sectioning and packing were extremely hard work. For Hermine Wech, the day began between 3 am and 4 am, and she would fall into bed exhausted at 9 pm.

While demand continued to rise, more and more farmers joined the “Lavanttaler Geflügelring” association, which still exists and functions perfectly today. The farmers elected Otto Wech as the managing director, and urged the Wechs to construct their own abattoir. A poultry slaughter system, a Danish product, was therefore installed in the newly erected building, originally intended to be a feed store. In 1960, when they began trial operation, this was really a financial adventure and no-one had any idea of the outcome.

In order to avoid the sales tax dilemma, the farmers had the poultry slaughtered to order and sold them to wholesalers and retailers in their own name. Thus the idea for the “farmhouse guarantee” incorporating the address of the individual farmer was born; much later, Wech became the first Austrian company to implement it. Over the years which followed, Wech collected the poultry from the farmers, slaughtered them, refrigerated them, packaged them and delivered them to the purchasers.

In 1960, Hermine Wech succeeded in persuading the retail cooperatives in Carinthia and Styria to add fresh poultry to their sales programmes. A major change and the initial spark which inspired not only specialist poultry dealers but also food retail chains to gradually add fresh poultry to their range of goods.

By 1960, the company had developed from its modest beginnings to an operation with an output of 3,000 to 3,500 poultry a week, eight staff and a vehicle fleet comprising two VW platform trucks; moreover, development continued apace. In 1967, the first large-scale poultry slaughterhouse, an English construction, was built at enormous expense. At that time, it was without a doubt the largest and most modern abattoir in Austria. The first fully automated slaughter system was installed no later than the end of the 1980s. The technical conversion and steadily increasing product quantities required extensive expertise, and so Hermine Wech familiarised herself with leading European companies and made use of anything she found good and in keeping with her quality concept. In 1994, the cooperative concept involving Wech, the farmers and the dealers was severely tested for the first time; Konsum – at that time the largest customer – became insolvent. However, with good quality and cost leadership, the company succeeded in increasing sales to other customers, especially to today’s main purchaser Rewe Austria (Billa, Merkur and Penny).

In 1996, a milestone was reached in expanding the company’s core competence. Hermine Wech took over the financially ailing company “Erster Kärnter Truthahn” in Glanegg, enabling the company to supply the entire range of white meat. She saved 100 jobs and the turkey farmers in Carinthia once again had a reliable partner.

The company continued to develop over the following years, and Hermine Wech, now supported by a dedicated management team, expanded Wech and its market shares by purchasing a turkey abattoir in Pöttelsdorf and by taking a step outside Austria with the takeover of a processing company in Hungary and a trading company in Slovenia. In order to prevent any shortage of raw materials in the feed segment, Wech will in future be cultivating grain and maize on its own fields in Romania.

A team of experienced executives supported by owner representative Mag. Jakob Sintschnig today make decisions relating to operations and corporate strategy while consistently implementing the Wech philosophy.