Germany's largest bakery Harry Brot builds €200 million factory in Hesse
Germany's largest bread producer Harry Brot is investing about €200 million in a new factory in Erlensee near Hanau, expected to create around 300 jobs from 2028 — a rare expansion amid a wave of bakery insolvencies across the country.
New factory in Hesse
Harry Brot, Germany's largest producer of bread and baked goods, is building its first plant in the state of Hesse, in Erlensee near Hanau, about 20 kilometers east of Frankfurt. The investment totals roughly €200 million. The factory will rise on the site of a former military airbase, Erlensee/Langendiebach, and is expected to create around 300 new jobs — BILD gives a broader range of 300 to 350.
The scale is substantial: the production hall is planned to be about 390 meters long and 80 meters wide. The technical model will be Harry's existing plant in Troisdorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, where three baking lines operate on a similar principle. According to all three sources, each line can produce between 2,000 and 7,000 loaves and 20,000 to 40,000 rolls per hour. Production in Erlensee will run around the clock.
The plant will feature solar installations, smart energy management and charging points for electric trucks, plus a high-bay warehouse with space for roughly 10,000 pallets. Construction is set to begin in late summer 2026, with the first bread expected to leave the new plant in the second quarter of 2028.
Expansion to the south
The new factory is part of a broader Harry Brot strategy to strengthen its position in southern Germany, where the company has so far been comparatively weak. Alongside the Erlensee project, Harry is also taking over the former Glockenbrot plant in Bergkirchen near Munich, previously owned by the retail group Rewe. As FAZ reports, Rewe originally planned to build a new meat-processing facility on the Erlensee site but abandoned the plan and offered the land to Harry Brot instead.
"Our two new locations in southern Germany will allow us to supply grocery retailers there by the shortest possible route as well," the company's sales and marketing director, Frank Kleiner, said in a statement.
Harry Brot, headquartered in Schenefeld near Hamburg, is Germany's market leader in bread production, employs more than 5,000 people and, as FAZ notes, generated revenue of nearly €1.4 billion in 2025.
Industry in crisis
The investment comes as parts of Germany's bakery sector struggle. According to data from credit agency Creditreform, cited by leadersnet, 63 companies in the bread-production sector filed for insolvency in the first half of 2026 — 40 percent more than a year earlier. BILD cites specific cases: the traditional bakery Maier in Bavaria, with six branches and 50 employees, filed for insolvency, as did a bakery chain in Schleswig-Holstein with nine branches and nearly 100 employees, the Wahl chain in Berlin and Brandenburg, and Leifert in Lower Saxony, which closed 12 branches. Cited causes of the crisis include rising costs, changing consumer habits — with shoppers increasingly buying bread at supermarkets — and intensifying price competition.
