This week the Family Business Office, for its nineteenth edition of Focus On World Family Business Leaders, brings you Dr Wolfram Freudenberg, fifth generation heir of the very diversified multinational family business of Freudenberg Group.

The Freudenberg Group is a German family-owned diversified group of businesses whose products include housewares and cleaning products, automobile parts, textiles, building materials, and telecommunications. Its headquarters are in Weinheim, Baden-Württemberg, and it has production facilities in Europe, Asia, Australia, South and North America. The parent family business was founded in 1849 as a producer of leather goods. Currently the family business is owned by stock holders who are all descendants of the original founder, most of which are now affluent families that live in primarily Europe or North America.

Freudenberg – a global technology group with around 48,000 employees in some 60 countries and annual sales of more than 8.8 billion euros in 2020. The Group’s headquarters are in Weinheim, Germany, in the middle of the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region.

It is the claim to excellence with which Freudenberg is largely known for. The industrial diversity that allows for ever more new applications. The innovation strength from many years of material, system and technology competence, inspired by diverse teams. Values that have guided this family business for nearly 170 years.

The family business of Freudenberg stresses that strong values are the yardstick for how the business thinks and acts. They guide the business’ daily interactions and they also define the values the business uses when dealing with customers, business partners, neighbours and the environment. This makes the Freudenberg family business a more reliable partner around the world.

Freudenberg is still family-owned, making it independent, long-term oriented and responsible in its actions. What guided the family business founder Carl Johann Freudenberg approximately 170 years ago still applies today.

His “Allgemeinen Betrachtungen” (General Observations) from 1897 are the inspiration for the company’s current Business Principles, which form the basis for the company’s Guiding Principles. Every employee is an ambassador for these values and pledges to uphold an internal Code of Conduct that governs practical workplace issues such as compliance, workplace safety, health and environmental protection.

( All factual and statistical information presented in this blog has been obtained from an extract of an article Freudenberg.com and Wikipedia.com ) Follow us on our Facebook page and Family Business Office website at www.familybusiness.org.mt

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