VEMAG Brand Guidelines: The Verden Vacuum-Filler Maker Founded in 1944

A wartime workshop that a butcher’s order turned into a machine builder.

VEMAG began in Verden, on the Aller in Lower Saxony, in 1944, under the name Holz- und Gerätebaugesellschaft mbH. The company’s own chronology names its founder as the lawyer Heinz-Jörn Zülch of Bremen, and German Wikipedia gives the same name. About 20 people made baking ovens, honey extractors and church tower clocks, the company says. Die Fleischerei, in a 75th-anniversary profile published in June 2019, and sweets processing, in its July–August 2019 issue, both give the same 1944 start in Verden.

The turn towards food came from a customer. In 2016 the trade magazine Prozesstechnik reported that a regional butcher had asked the firm to build a piston filler for his sausage making; demand for those fillers rose, and they became its main product. Dr. Niclas Rathmann, then head of management, told the magazine that this order was where the modern company started.

In 1950 the firm took the name VEMAG Verdener Maschinen- und Apparatebau GmbH and, by its own account, began producing the GNOM and CAM piston filling machines for the butcher’s trade. The next step was a continuous machine. The company’s chronology dates the ROBOT G250, which it describes as the first continuously operating vacuum filling machine for industrial demand, to 1957. Die Fleischerei called the continuous vacuum filler a significant factor in the company’s success.

The range then widened in steps. In 1965, the company says, it took over the can filling machines of the Frankfurt firm FKF. In 1982 came the ROBOT 500, which the chronology presents as the first continuously operating vacuum filler for small businesses. In 1986 it developed and sold its first coextrusion equipment for filled products.

A named mechanism, a modular range and a test kitchen.

The feature VEMAG talks about most is the double screw. The company dates the HP series, built on double screw technology, to 1992. Die Fleischerei described the double screw in 2019 as the company’s unique selling point, and said it handles the filling material gently and reduces losses. FoodBev, reporting on a new production hall, explained the design as a double-spindle principle with only two components, the screw and its housing, which allows a quick change between products.

A second feed system followed. VEMAG says it entered rotary vane pump technology in 1993 with the ROBBY vacuum filler, and in 1995 introduced the DP series, saying this made it the only manufacturer to offer vacuum filling machines with two different feeding elements. The same year it moved into bakery with dough-dividing technology and into inline grinding with the Filling Grinder 980.

The company describes its basic concept as a modular system of standard fillers and attachments tailored to the user. In the 2016 Prozesstechnik interview, Rathmann gave a picture of how that works: after a short clean and a change of attachment, one line could make mince in the morning, meatballs at midday, hamburgers in the afternoon and bratwurst at night. Named machines from that period include the AML273 meatball loader and the SL305 and DL302 tray-loading lines, which the magazine said would be shown at the IFFA trade fair that year. The newest generation of vacuum fillers on the company’s chronology is the HPnx, introduced in 2024.

Applications have spread well beyond sausage. VEMAG’s website now lists vegetarian and vegan products and bakery lines, and its news page for 2026 records appearances at interpack, at Interzoo for pet food, and at südback in Stuttgart for bakeries. Customers can test products on its machines at the Customer Center, which it says opened in 2005, and at the Bakery Innovation Center, opened in 2021.

Recognition has come mostly from the trade. The German agricultural society DLG’s International FoodTec Award went to the AML273 meatball loader in 2015, in gold, according to a list of winners published by Yumda and German Wikipedia. VEMAG says its LinkLoader LL335 took a silver medal in the same award in 2021. In April 2019 Fleischnet reported that the company had been honoured with Lower Saxony’s foreign trade prize, the Außenwirtschaftspreis.

Machines shown in motion.

Makers of food processing machinery tend to show the work itself. Stainless lines are photographed under cool light, fillets move along white belts, sausage ropes curve out of a filler, slicers fan portions onto a conveyor, and fryers and seasoning drums turn snacks in close-up. The BBC opened a 2017 report on Marel in just that way, with cod on a conveyor and a machine cutting each fillet into portions.

Steel carries much of the imagery. Wash-down surfaces, welded seams and the curve of a hopper recur in close-up, and the machines are shown at close range.

Test kitchens and technology centres are the sector’s showrooms. JBT Marel lists Customer Technology Centers on several continents where customers can run their own product through the equipment, and Handtmann describes its Forum in Biberach as a technology and customer centre. Websites often follow the customer’s food rather than the machine: JBT Marel sorts its site by poultry, meat, seafood, prepared foods and beverages, and Handtmann’s regional sites by meat and sausage, baked goods, pet food and dairy.

The trade fairs set the calendar. IFFA in Frankfurt, SÜDPACK in Friedrichshafen, Anuga FoodTec in Cologne, Seafood Processing Global in Barcelona and PACK EXPO in the United States are regular venues for the sector, alongside bakery and ingredient shows: vegconomist reported that Handtmann took new bakery processes to iba in 2025, and JBT Marel’s news page reported on CibusTec in 2026. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker: who founded it, who owns it, and where its machines are made, marking clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

A German factory and an American owner who began as its agent.

VEMAG’s ownership grew out of a sales relationship. Robert Reiser began selling processing equipment from a small office in Boston in 1959, and his company’s history says it became the exclusive North American sales and service agent for Vemag that year. In 2000 VEMAG divided itself into VEMAG Maschinenbau GmbH, for machines and attachments, and VEMAG Anlagenbau GmbH, for systems and control technology. German Wikipedia says the smokehouse business placed in Anlagenbau was sold on in 2001 and now trades as VETEC Anlagenbau.

The same year brought the change of owner. VEMAG’s chronology records the takeover of its shares in 2001 by Robert Reiser & Co., Inc. of Canton, Massachusetts; Reiser’s own history words it as the owners of Reiser purchasing a majority interest in Vemag. Prozesstechnik reported in 2016 that the company had belonged to the American Reiser group since 2001, and Die Fleischerei in 2019 called Reiser its strategic investor and shareholder, as well as its largest customer for North America.

On where machines are made, VEMAG says: “We produce and manufacture exclusively at our site in Verden (Aller), Germany.” In 2016 Prozesstechnik described Verden as the headquarters and main production site. The figures for the workforce differ by source and date. The magazine gave 480 people at Verden and 620 worldwide in 2016; the company’s website now says over 950 employees; German Wikipedia, citing group accounts, gives 793 for 2024. The company puts its export share at over 80 percent, and it has sales and service companies in countries including Poland, China, Brazil and Turkey.

Verden itself is still growing. On 3 November 2026, VEMAG says, it opened a new production facility of 4,600 square metres on the site, adding about a quarter to its production area. The building gathers the making of the conveyor curves used in its filling machines and dough portioners; FoodBev reported at the groundbreaking that it would focus on double screws and infeed scrolls. Andreas Bruns leads the management as chairman, the company says.

VEMAG’s website stylesheet names Open Sans and uses a teal-blue more often than any other colour value, which is why our palette leans that way; this is a reading of the site, not published guidance.

For a design guide, VEMAG shows how a filling-machine maker can build its name around one mechanism and one town. Compare Handtmann, another German maker of filling machines, and Provisur, an American group gathered from several older names. For this guide we use teal, slate and a signal yellow with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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