Technology and vision: Sabine Weyermann 25 years on the job

Consider this: A young women of 27, suddenly thrown into the awesome responsibility of managing a century old company. Such was the task that Sabine Weyermann faced on August 3, 1985, when her father Heinz, not even 60 years old, suddenly passed away. Only four years earlier, in the family tradition, Sabine had finished her brew engineering degree at Weihenstephan, but the next few years were a fast track of on-the-job training. By 1989, she had found a partner in her new husband, Thomas Kraus, also a Weihenstephan-trained brew engineer.

The 1990s were a decade of often highly leveraged corporate mergers, acquisitions, and buyouts. It was in this new world that Sabine and Thomas decided on a new course for Weyermann®—a decision that virtually caused the company to re-invent itself. Weyermann® had always been a technologically sound enterprise, quite in line with what you would expect from a company behind a solid “Made in Germany” product label. Now she and Thomas would embark on a program of taking the company from the malting technology of the late 20th into the demanding, high-tech environment of the 21st century—with automation, total process and quality control, and traceability from the receiving docks to the shipping docks—while continuing to emphasize quality over mere quantity.

But there was something else stirring within the old red brick buildings at Brennerstrasse: It was an emerging bold and ambitious vision of a new place for Weyermann® in a future international brew industry. It was Sabine’s vision to turn Weyermann® into a truly recognizable global brand. And she was going to do it in a unique way.

There was another unique aspect to Sabine’s vision: Weyermann® adopted a marketing strategy that relied mostly on personal interactions, not just on impersonal advertising and formal-legal relationships with wholesalers and customers.

Sabine’s motto of “turning business partners into friends” has obviously worked. Today, the unique red and yellow Weyermann® branding is as ubiquitous as it is unmistakable; and Weyermann® malt has become the global gold standard for quality in the industry.

So, what is life like, after 25 very exciting and challenging years as the head of an icon in the brew industry? Says Sabine Weyermann, “I look at my work through a generational lens. When I had to step up to the plate in the 1980s, I was the fourth generation to take the helm of our family business. Looking back, I believe I have met the challenges of my time. We now have a fifth Weyermann generation in training and a sixth one in the cradle, and I feel good about, one day, passing the scepter on to the next generation.”