170 years of KWS - Future with heritage

Farmer Matthias Christian Rabbethge recognizes the potential of the beet sugar business early on. He founds KWS by acquiring a majority stake in a sugar factory.

With landlord family Giesecke, Matthias Christian Rabbethge brings well-capitalized partners into the company.

Matthias Rabbethge Jr. is the first in Germany to start with the systematic breeding of sugarbeet and lays the foundation for the company’s success.

The Rabbethge/Giesecke duo shaped KWS sustainably and successfully in the 1870s. Matthias Rabbethge Jr. focuses on beet breeding, Julius Giesecke on agricultural landownership. The company enters a difficult era with the death of the two in 1885 and 1881, respectively.

In 1885, Carl Rabbethge reorganizes the company as a public limited company under the new name "Kleinwanzleben Sugar Factory, formerly Rabbethge & Giesecke Joint Stock Company."

At KWS, botanist Dr. Ing. Wilhelm Raatz introduces scientific breeding standards. His systematic approach for the evaluation of breeding material is groundbreaking and will soon be adopted by the entire industry.

The sugar market is booming: Production facilities are growing and the KWS success curve is showing a steep upward trend.
The first international location of KWS is inaugurated in Ukraine, at the time the largest sugarbeet growing area in the world.

KWS reacts to economic losses during the First World War and to the expropriation of the subsidiary in Ukraine with the diversification of the seed business. At the beginning of the 1920s, the production of fodder beet begins, followed shortly afterwards by cereals and potatoes.

The social achievements enforced in the Weimar Republic also benefit the over 2,000 workers and employees of the Kleinwanzleben sugar factory. The company invests in new workers’ housing estates, civil servants’ houses and has a bath house, a doctor’s station and a play school built.

Ernst Giesecke dies. For more than 40 years, he was co-responsible for business development as a member of the Executive Board. His son-in-law Karl Büchting replaces him in management, and in the following years he is responsible for the commercial-strategic line.

During the time of the Nazi dictatorship, “eastern workers” are also forced to work at KWS. No compensation claims are made to the company. Nevertheless, KWS stands by its historical and moral responsibility and participates in the financing of the Foundation “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft” [Remembrance, Responsibility and Future], founded in 2000.
The Second World War is the biggest break in the history of the company. Klein Wanzleben is located in the Soviet occupation zone and thus the company loses its livelihood.

In June 1945, the British military transported the families Rabbethge and Giesecke in a dramatic “cloak-and-dagger operation” with 60 tons of elite seed from Klein Wanzleben to Einbeck in Lower Saxony. Rabbethge and Giesecke Saatzucht GmbH, founded as a rescue company, receives new premises in Einbeck, which today is still the headquarters of KWS.
Thanks to the leading sugarbeet variety “Kleinwanzlebener E”, the company is quickly back on track and begins reinitiating its foreign relations. Potato growing is resumed in Einbeck.

KWS expands its breeding programs with corn, oil and protein plants, including rapeseed and sunflowers.

KWS establishes subsidiaries and associated companies in Europe and overseas, and opens foreign branches including in Turkey and Chile. In the following decades, the company systematically expands its presence in the temperate climate zone.

With the takeover of the largest German grain breeding company, KWS intensifies its activities in this area. The breeding programs for wheat and barley and the ones for rye and oats are merged under the umbrella of Lochow-Petkus GmbH.

KWS holds 50% of the newly founded company Betaseed. It breeds, produces and sells sugarbeet seed for the North American market.

The use of biotechnological methods since the early 1970s represents a quantum leap for plant breeding. The first cell biology laboratory starts work.

KWS receives a new logo. The color orange has been a key feature of the company since the 1930s. While the orange sun evokes associations with the seed, the tapered plots of land symbolize the diversity of plant cultivation

After 23 years as Chairman of the Management Board, Dr. Carl-Ernst Büchting joins the Supervisory Board, assuming the chairmanship. His son, Dr. Andreas J. Büchting, becomes his successor.

KWS responds to the rapid progress in molecular biology in 1984 with the foundation of PLANTA Angewandte Pflanzengenetik und Biotechnologie. PLANTA is responsible for R&D projects in the company and provides services for all KWS’s breeding activities.

KWS acquires all shares in Betaseed Inc., USA. Today, with Betaseed, the company is No. 1 for sugarbeet seed in the US.

After the political turn in 1990, the company returns to its place of origin. KWS invests around 10 million euros in a new breeding station in the old location.

With the intensification of genetic research, a new chapter in breeding history begins. It accelerates breeding progress to produce new, improved varieties.

The company is known as KWS SAAT AG.

With the joint venture AgReliant, KWS is now represented almost nationwide with the breeding, production and marketing of innovative corn varieties in the American “corn belt.”

Success can be seeded – The “orange company” celebrates 150 years of KWS.
The foreign share of sales is over 70 percent.

With the Joint Ventures RIBER – KWS Sementes S.A. and KWS Melhoramento e Sementes Ltda., KWS enters the Brazilian seed business.

KWS and the Chinese company Kengfeng found the joint venture KENGFENG - KWS SEEDS CO., LTD in the corn business.

KWS builds up a long-term position in the growing vegetable seeds market and acquires the Dutch vegetable seed specialist Pop Vriend Seeds.

KWS sharpens its focus on crop diversity and independence and divests its corn business in South America and China.