Hiestand Holding AG, based in

Schlieren Schlieren ( ; , ) are optical inhomogeneities in transparent media that are not necessarily visible to the human eye. Schlieren physics developed out of the need to produce high-quality lenses devoid of such inhomogeneities. These inhomogeneit ...

, was a listed

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

large-scale

bakery A bakery is an establishment that produces and sells flour-based baked goods made in an oven such as bread, cookies, cakes, doughnuts, bagels, Pastry, pastries, and pies. Some retail bakeries are also categorized as Coffeehouse, cafés, servi ...

with a focus on convenience frozen baked goods ("ready to bake products") as well as sales concepts and services, which merged into the

Aryzta ARYZTA AG is a food business based in Zürich, Switzerland. It operates in Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It is incorporated in Switzerland and is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (the Zürich Stock Exchange). It discontinued its listi ...

Group in 2008. The Hiestand Group as a whole employed around 3,200 people and generated sales of 741 million Swiss francs in 2007. Aryzta in Switzerland continues to use the Hiestand brand for baked goods.

History

At the age of 24, Alfred “Fredy” Hiestand set up his first bakery with second-hand dough machines in an unused

laundromat A self-service laundry, coin laundry, or coin wash, is a facility where clothes and some household textiles are washed and dried without much personalized professional help. They are known in the United Kingdom as launderettes or laundrettes, ...

. His starting capital was CHF 5,000. In 1967, together with Albert Abderhalden, he laid the foundation for a convenience frozen baked goods group that, before its takeover in 2008, generated sales of 740.7 million Swiss francs with around 3,200 employees. A year later, Hiestand developed the first

croissant A croissant (, ) is a French cuisine, French pastry in a crescent shape made from a laminated yeast dough similar to puff pastry. It is a buttery, flaky, ''viennoiserie'' pastry inspired by the shape of the Austrian cuisine, Austrian ''Kifli, ...

dough pieces as a semi-finished product for bakeries, which he sold to major customers. In 1988, the decisive factor was the pre-fermentation of the dough before freezing, so that it could be baked quickly and easily later on at the point of sale. After this successful development, he became known in Switzerland as the "Gipfeli-King". In 2003 Alfred Hiestand sold his share and withdrew from the company. For a time, Albert Abderhalden ran the company. Hiestand has also been represented in

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since 1989 with the Hiestand and Suhr brands. In 2006, Hiestand took over the Fricopan company in

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with its branch in

Immekath Immekath is a village and a former municipality in the district Altmarkkreis Salzwedel, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 January 2010, it is part of the town Klötze Klötze () is a town in the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel (district), in Saxony-Anha ...

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. Hiestand had subsidiaries in Switzerland, Germany,

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Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

and

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. In August 2008, the company merged with its largest shareholder, the Irish IAWS Group, to form Aryzta. The two companies continued to operate independently on the market under the same roof with their existing brands. Hiestand Holding shares were listed on the

SWX Swiss Exchange SIX Swiss Exchange (formerly SWX Swiss Exchange), based in Zürich, is Switzerland's principal stock exchange (the other being BX Swiss). SIX Swiss Exchange also trades other securities such as Swiss government bonds and derivatives such as sto ...

until 20 August 2008.{{Cite web , title=Hiestand: meldet hohe Zustimmung zur Fusion mit IAWS – WebBaecker.Net , url=https://www.webbaecker.de/hiestand-meldet-hohe-zustimmung-zur-fusion-mit-iaws/ , access-date=2023-09-26 , website=www.webbaecker.de

Literature

* Philipp Gut: ''Gipfelikönig Fredy Hiestand. Vom Bauernbub zum Grossbäcker und Gesundheitspionier''. Stämpfli Verlag, Bern 2017, ISBN 978-3-7272-7918-8

References

Baked goods 1967 establishments in Switzerland Companies listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange