Going all in on semi-finished products

Whether juice, jam, cake or yoghurt: if it's got fruit in it, that fruit may well come from Rauch. Since the first concentrate factory went into operation in the 1950s, Rauch has also been selling so-called "semi-finished" fruit juice concentrates, purees and, for some years now, frozen fruit.

"Discretion is the top priority in this business. We do not name names and do not advertise," explains semi-finished product manager Dr. Wolfgang Schwald. The particular challenge in this business is the living product: harvest quantity, acidity, colour - all this fluctuates from harvest to harvest with every fruit, sometimes to an extreme degree. And so, too, does the price.

That's why Rauch's experts have to negotiate each contract with each customer individually, whether it's 500 kg or 2,000 tons. Competition is fierce, with countless suppliers battling it out in the marketplace. But Rauch has a great advantage, says Schwald. "We benefit from the excellent reputation that Rauch has built up over decades with customers all over the world through reliability, fairness and market-leading quality. In 2010 we decided to use this reputation to achieve strong growth in this dormant business as well."

"Rauch is not on every container that contains Rauch. Semi-finished products are a discreet business.