When Franz Leiber founded the company that now bears his name on 6 March 1954, the word upcycling didn’t yet exist. The founder’s basic idea of obtaining valuable extracts from secondary beer brewing streams was also innovative. Leiber is now a globally networked specialist for brewers’ yeast, and develops ingredients for biotechnology, the food industry, animal nutrition and agriculture in its own laboratories. To accomplish this, over 200 employees in Bramsche work together with around 65 partners worldwide to refine brewers’ yeast, thus making Leiber GmbH, which has developed from Bierhefeverarbeitungsgesellschaft Franz Leiber & Co over the past 70 years, a highly-specialised market leader.

Innovation is the company’s DNA. In cooperation with diverse customers, new products are constantly being developed in our internal Research and Development department.  Its laboratories are an important element of the new Leiber Campus which was inaugurated in 2023.

These modern, three-storey headquarters gather the various departments – from Customer Service, Sales and Marketing to Corporate Development and Finance – together under the same roof in the immediate vicinity of the production site in Bramsche-Engter. Colleagues meet up in the integrated restaurant, a test kitchen provides room for experimental tastings with guests and bright galleries offer space for discussions.

“With the Leiber Campus, we want, firstly, to offer our staff a good place to work and meet up and, secondly, to invest in Leiber’s successful future at the Bramsche site”, says Gilbert Klausmeyer, Managing Director of Leiber GmbH. In the recent past, Leiber has also invested in production facilities in Engter and in a new biomass power plant that is intended to reduce CO₂ emissions by approx. 50% from the end of 2024. Leiber aims to achieve net zero at its German production site by 2030. At Leiber, sustainability is not only firmly entrenched in the company’s motto, “Give Yeast a Second Life”, but throughout the entire value chain. As an intermediary between major breweries on the one hand and food and animal nutrition industry companies on the other, Leiber is a medium-sized ‘hidden champion’.

“Decades of experience with the raw material of brewers’ yeast combined with the pioneering spirit of a start-up are what make Leiber unique. My grandfather Franz Leiber himself exemplified the innovation that we are continuing to evolve”, says Bernd Schmidt-Ankum, Managing Director of Leiber GmbH and the founder’s grandson.

The team is at the centre of this corporate success. Leiber offers varied, crisis-proof and meaningful jobs. “We offer a wide range of jobs. We offer opportunities for trainees and production employees, engineers and laboratory technicians or also salespeople and key account managers”, says Magdalena Brosda, head of the Human Resources department. Applications from the Osnabrück region are equally as welcome as those from the university network with which Leiber cooperates.

In order to present the company, the products and also career opportunities to interested parties and neighbours, Leiber is planning an open day on Sunday, 15 September 2024. This family-friendly date has already been set; the programme of events is to be finalised before being published.