Centravo Group

A quarter of a century ago, the reprocessing and recycling companies in Basel, Zurich and Bern came together to establish Centravo. These companies transferred to this new central organisation not only their business activities but also their cooperative philosophy. The most important value of this philosophy was and remains the idea of community.

This fundamental attitude of "working together" was the primary factor behind the success of Centravo in the past, and even today we are guided by the notion that we can only succeed if we stand together (just as our predecessor companies did in the past) and internalise the principle that in our small and diverse country only the consolidation of our various abilities can give us the strength we need. Only by "working together" will we be able to overcome the adversity associated with an ever-more competitive market and greater competition from abroad. It may sometimes seem attractive to go it alone, but such an approach is usually only successful for a short time. Only a cooperative approach makes sense over the long term!

It was exactly for this reason that Centravo was established 25 years ago. The cooperative represents an exemplary joint effort that we need to safeguard and nurture. Centravo provides services for the meat industry that include recycling waste materials and by-products. We also ensure transparency and safety in the upstream agricultural sector through stable reference prices, and we perform a public service with our disposal activities and measures for preventing and controlling epidemics.

At the heart of this broad range of services, which would be too much for one company to handle, is the joint management of the raw material base. It is the pooling of capacities here that enables the exploitation of the logistics synergies and economies of scale that are needed to keep the entire sector profitable. A “cherry picking” mentality with separate marketing of individual products cannot and must not be allowed to endanger the entire system!

Centravo operates successfully even under difficult conditions. However, the degree of this success is directly dependent on the extent to which capacities can be pooled. This is why I believe that the rewards that come with such success are also linked to the degree to which such pooling can be achieved.

«By-products are our main concern»