Landau, Offenbach an der Queich In Jürgen Heindl’s world, the small is sometimes just as important as the big. It took him big vision, big machines and big investments to be successful as an entrepreneur in the paper industry. But also a good feeling for small customers.
Since 1991, Heindl has created a corrugated board and paper giant with Progroup, number three in Europe for corrugated board and number five for paper. He has achieved something that one would rather attribute to self-made entrepreneurs of the post-war period: to create a company for future generations from nothing – and that in the paper industry, a market in which only huge sums are invested and innovation is not taken particularly seriously .
In 2021, Progroup generated sales of more than 1.3 billion euros. Twelve corrugated cardboard plants and three paper mills are part of it, as well as a logistics company and 1,700 employees in Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Poland, Great Britain and Italy.
And the founder is not only a successful entrepreneur – but an encourager in the paper industry. Martin Krengel, CEO of the Wepa Group, which is the market leader in hygiene paper made from recycled fibers, judges: “In this capital-intensive industry, he has achieved something special in a short time with his consistent business model and entrepreneurial courage.”
And Tom Rüsen, Director of the Witten Institute for Family Businesses, hopes that there will be “more Jürgen Heindls who create thousands of jobs and turn industries upside down”. But what drove Jürgen Heindl to take such big risks?
In 2021, the company generated sales of more than 1.3 billion euros.
Heindl grew up on a farm in the Odenwald. Life there brings him three insights: First, the great freedom for adolescents. Because someone is always there on a farm, but the children are not constantly looked after. Secondly, “the work is done when it is due,” says Heindl. For example, when it means harvesting hay instead of going to the swimming pool. And thirdly, “the work is always done in a team”, meaning that everyone from grandma to grandson lends a hand.
At the dinner table, where wheat and milk prices are listed, young Jürgen learns from his uncle that being an engineer is worth striving for and entrepreneurship can be a life goal.
He first studied electrical engineering with a focus on software development/communications technology with a scholarship from the Federal Post Office in Dieburg and then studied industrial engineering in Esslingen.
Group training camp
The entrepreneur starts at the paper manufacturer PWA as a management assistant, a formative, demanding and enriching time for Heindl, who has worked there for a total of ten years. At some point he was given the job of closing down a pulp mill and building a corrugated cardboard factory – with an old machine and “cracking” start-up losses.
Then came the oil crisis in 1981, but Jürgen Heindl didn’t want to close the corrugated board plant again straight away, he was now plant and divisional manager and was looking for customers who he also found: they were medium-sized packaging manufacturers who didn’t have their own corrugated board factory, so one depend on reliable delivery. After three years, Heindl’s plant is the group’s most successful plant.
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But the colleagues of the man in his late twenties, who has meanwhile been appointed to the board, do not agree to transfer the creative customer search to other plants. Heindl learns “that a profit center structure doesn’t work because I, as the board member, couldn’t dictate anything to the division managers”. He also learns that the paper industry is quite hostile to innovation because the very expensive paper machines, which sometimes cost a few hundred million euros and have often been in operation for 40 years, are then happy to continue to run for another 20 years. “That slows down innovations,” is the observation of the father of two.
And he decides to become an entrepreneur and wants “never to look at old works again”, but always bet on the latest technologies. “A plan” that convinced his wife Herta “from the very first moment”.
Big plans, small folder, wide view
Above all, Jürgen Heindl has to convince financiers. At the same time, however, he also knows what he needs to be successful: complete entrepreneurial responsibility. “My knowledge is worth 51 percent of the future company,” he says.
And so he sets off, his small folder with the business plan for a corrugated cardboard factory under his arm and proof that he wants to contribute his severance pay and subsidies. The company founder found three silent partners for the remaining 49 percent through the Sparkasse Mannheim. The risk of entrepreneurship can begin.
He also needs suppliers who supply him with machines and controls. It’s not easy, even if he knows the industry’s suppliers from his ten years in the group. Many shouted: “Heindl, nobody needs what you want!” But he finally convinced the world market leader for corrugated cardboard systems, BHS from Weiden, and the control company Witron to deliver what they wanted for the greenfield project.
The head of Progroup is considered a model entrepreneur.
His former employer is suddenly his biggest potential competitor. Heindl’s advantage: The businessman is still convinced that he knew him better than he did himself. People there thought, Heindl believes, “my company will go bankrupt in six months”. They didn’t understand that the customers needed a reliable supplier who takes them seriously. A competitor says: “What Jürgen Heindl saw, we didn’t see.”
The close cooperation with the customers is part of the business model, the Progroup is literally growing together with them, with some packaging manufacturers settling right next to the Heindl’sche Wellpappfabriken and vice versa. You can rely on Heindl’s promise that Progroup will never make packaging itself.
Sustainability follows thoughtfulness
Heindl thinks very openly, very broadly and very strategically – and sustainable. This becomes visible in the constant expansion of the value-added chain and backward integration: Thinking of corrugated cardboard, paper accounts for 70 percent of the costs, and 70 percent of the costs for paper today are energy costs.
In 2001, for example, Heindl built the first paper factory – an investment volume of 240 million euros and a turnover of 85 million euros. And he wants to save a lot of water. The way: closing the water cycle. But the technology is too sensitive, water leaks out. The solution takes months, but saves 80 percent water.
He financed his growth until 2015 primarily through banking syndicates, since then also with bonds. Heindl’s conclusion: “The capital market is fitness for a family business.”
And Heindl convinced the investors again and again. Because: From 2001, the paper mills provided the security of supply for the corrugated board plants and from 2011 the company’s own power plant provided the energy for the significantly more energy-intensive paper production, which at Heindl consists of 100 percent recycled paper.
Heindl’s son Maximilian has been running the company since the beginning of the year, and the father himself has moved to the supervisory board. They drafted the succession plan when Maximilian was still studying industrial engineering in Karlsruhe. The son worked for four and a half years at the paper machine manufacturer Voith Paper before moving to the Progroup board.
The handover has already taken place.
(Photo: Progroup AG)
Tom Rüsen from the Witten Institute for Family Businesses says: “Jürgen Heindl is extremely forward-looking and consistent, not only when it comes to innovations but also when it comes to succession planning.” the father only a few shares.
Vinzenz has also been building the Professionals Academy for two years. It strengthens the network between Progroup and customers from the packaging industry through events, but also knowledge of market developments and succession in family businesses. When Senior Jürgen looks back, he sums it up: “The best thing is that our two sons have succeeded us.”
When employees and business partners become friends
Part of the Heindl family business is that Jürgen Heindl not only shares his favorite pastime – travel – with his family, but also with employees and customers. His strategy: creating trust for future paths.
Special tours have been part of this for almost 30 years, which Heindl prefers to other rewards because they are memorable: “I don’t want our employees to only know the world from television.”
The entrepreneur shares his passion for travel with his customers and employees.
(Photo: Roger Koeppe)
The entrepreneur, who once drove to India in a VW bus, has also been traveling with client entrepreneurs for almost 25 years. It’s a big trip. Heindl rode the Silk Route with them from Istanbul to Hong Kong and the Spice Route from Tanzania to Cape Town in South Africa.
Heindl doesn’t shy away from using the word friendship when he talks about his fellow travellers: “Anyone who has spent the night together in Mongolian yurts and driven through North Korea has learned what trust means.”
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