Fresh bread from a branch of the gramss bakery will be history as of tomorrow. The production facility in meerane (saxony) will cease operations by the weekend, a spokeswoman for the responsible insolvency administrator christian heintze announced. The remaining stores of the bamberg-based bakery chain were supplied from meerane.
In mid-november, the bakery chain filed for insolvency for five of its companies. These companies, which bear names such as "annas taglich brot and "aunt annas bakery" the entire branch business – 80 sales outlets in northern bavaria, thuringia and saxony – depended on these companies.
445 employees affected by insolvency. How many still fear for their jobs now is unclear. Because the insolvency proceedings are as confusing as the corporate structure of the gramss group. Each of the companies has its own insolvency administrator, who is naturally initially only concerned with the company for which he is responsible. "The division of the branches was chaotically organized", said christoph alexander jacobi, insolvency administrator of the bread& co. Gmbh& co. KG. It is unclear why so many gmbhs have been founded. "The only person who could have been happy about this was the tax advisor, because of the annual financial statements", jacobi said.
The insolvency administrator from chemnitz assumes that he will be able to continue to work for the bread&butter company co. In short twelve of the 15 stores will have been sold – to nine different new owners. "Gramss will no longer be at the store.", he clarified. For the employees it is a stressful situation. "I hope that the new owners will take over a substantial part of the workforce", said jacobi. He has already signed a number of takeover agreements. However, many of the employees had made their own inquiries weeks ago.
Frustrated employees
No wonder from the point of view of the employees. "The communication problem that we already had with mr. Gramss has continued with the insolvency administrators.", reported a former bamberger gramss employee.
Company boss gerhard gramss was not available to answer questions from our newspaper yesterday either. In a statement, he said that the development of the saxon production site in meerane "makes us very concerned".
According to insolvency administrator heintze, all of the 70 or so employees in meerane will receive notice of termination. Hopes and fears, on the other hand, remain with the sales outlets. All in all, two thirds of the stores will probably be continued by other operators, said insolvency administrator jacobi. "There was no interested buyer who wanted to take over the entire structure."
for the GBB backhaus KG in bamberg, which is also insolvent, things are looking better. According to information from our newspaper, talks with an investor are underway here. GBB continues to produce for the remaining mainstay of the gramss group: frozen products, primarily for discounters.