“I am happy that our search for a successor was successful. In Ante, we have found a family business that will continue the BioPell brand while securing existing jobs,” Dr. Reinhold Gies, managing director of Dr. Gies Vermögensverwaltung Future Energies explains. BioPell was established in 2005. Gies acquired the production site in Empfingen in 2009.
According to Managing Director Jörn Kimmich, the acquisition will increase Ante Group’s pellet production capacity to over 600,000 t a year. At the Somplar site, the capacity was around 250,000 t in 2021, and that of Rottleberode was over 175,000 t. Already in 2021, the Ante Group was Germany’s largest pellet manufacturer. With the takeover of the pellet mill in the Black Forest with its annual capacity of 80,000 t and the increase in capacity at the Rottleberode site, the group’s potential production output has grown by nearly 200,000 t a year in recent years.
For the Ante Group, the acquisition of the pellet mill in the Freudenstadt district represents another strategic development step in southern Germany. The direct transport connection to the A81 motorway opens up the market segment in the greater Stuttgart area, the Black Forest and the Lake Constance region as well as in neighboring Switzerland and France. During the expansion of the Rötenbach site, which Ante took over in 2021, the pellet mill in Empfingen is an important building block in the further processing of by-products, as the group emphasizes.
We follow the zero-waste principle, i.e. we want to use 100% of the raw material. The new production site fits perfectly into our value chain and is a milestone that accelerates our expansion in the Black Forest.
