Skin Care Products Firm Beiersdorf to Open New $202M Hub

Personal care products maker Beiersdorf is committing €170 million (about $202 million) to construct a new hub near its planned production plant in Leipzig, Germany to serve the European market, the company announced in a recent release.

“With the combination of production site and hub, Beiersdorf wants to position itself optimally for consumer habits and retail landscapes of the future and to create the conditions for state-of-the-art supply chain infrastructure in the heart of Europe,” Harald Emberger, corporate senior vice president of supply chain, said in a statement. “The interplay between production and hub offers unique development opportunities in this context to offer our customers completely new solutions. We would be delighted to be able to implement this project in the city of Leipzig, an attractive location with a skilled workforce and a good investment environment.”

The Hub project, along with the new €220 million production plant, represents the company’s largest investment in a single location. If the Leipzig City Council approves the company’s plans, Beiersdorf will purchase a plot within the Leipzig-Seehausen II industrial estate. Specialist service providers will run the operations at the new facility.

“With the Beiersdorf Group, an important industry is locating to Leipzig and this is a major new development opportunity for us,” said the city’s mayor, Burkhard Jung, in the release. “We are thus positioning ourselves more broadly in Leipzig, and hundreds of new, skilled jobs are being created. The cosmetics industry in Germany has a turnover of around €8.8 billion – which puts Germany in second place in the EU only behind France. With the new investment, one of the most important companies in this industry is setting up shop in Leipzig and making an economic promise for the future.”

Beiersdorf revealed in April that it intends to shut down its skin products plant in Cleveland, TN this year and permanently lay off 134 workers. The company said it made the decision after it determined retrofitting the plant was too costly.