Handtmann Brand Guidelines: A Biberach Brass Foundry & the Sausage Filler

A bell founder sets up in an old mill building.

Handtmann began as a brass foundry. In 1873 the bell founder and master mechanic Christoph Albert Handtmann (1845–1918) set up in the historic Bachmühle building in Biberach, in Upper Swabia, on a plot of about 1,200 square metres, the company’s history says. His first products were fittings for fruit-brandy distilleries, brewhouses and beer storage barrels, a line that survives in the group today.

The business passed through the family. In 1919 his sons Karl Albert, a master brass founder, and Adolf Karl, a businessman, became partners; Adolf Karl added a wholesale trade in taps and malleable-iron pipe fittings for installers. In 1929 the works moved out of the town centre to a site beside the Biberach gasworks, which the company attributes to the smell from the oil furnaces in the melting shop. German Wikipedia, citing the commercial register, records that Adolf Karl became sole owner in 1944.

The third generation changed the business most. Arthur Handtmann joined as a partner in 1946 and added aluminium sand casting, German Wikipedia says; he became sole owner in 1953, when the firm had 51 employees, according to the company. Biberach later made him an honorary citizen and, in 2002, renamed a street after him. The company’s history divides its past into five generations: Christoph Albert from 1873, Karl from 1919, Arthur from 1953, Thomas from 1998, and Markus Handtmann and Valentin Ulrich since 2023.

A request for a hand-operated sausage filler.

The food machinery came from a customer’s question. In 1954, the company says, Arthur Handtmann decided to build up his own machine engineering after being asked whether he could make a hand-operated sausage filling and portioning machine, and the Handtmann Maschinenfabrik was founded. German Wikipedia’s biography dates the start of butchery-machine production to 1953, with the engineer Hans Müller and three other staff. So 1954 is the company’s date and the one used for its 50th anniversary in 2004.

From there the works expanded abroad. Its first foreign sales company opened in England in 1986 as Handtmann Ltd., followed by the United States in 1990, Italy and Canada in 1991, France in 1997, Brazil in 2000 and China in 2006, with Thailand, Colombia and Poland among the later additions. In 1999 the works moved to the Aspach industrial area of Biberach. German Wikipedia records a customer forum opened there in 2010 and a second customer and technology centre of about 4,000 square metres in 2016.

The best-known product line is the VF series of vacuum fillers. Meatingplace described the VF 800 range in September 2016 as new fillers with more than 100 developments, shown with an inline grinding system, the FS 520 forming systems and the ConPro system for products in alginate casing; Food Processing in Australia covered the series in October 2016. Handtmann’s UK site now calls the range the VF 800 generation, from the VF 804 S for small artisan producers upward, and calls the firm a pioneer in vacuum filling.

Acquisitions widened the range upstream. In 2020 Handtmann bought the Inotec group, a maker of mixing and size-reduction machines and of linking, separating and de-clipping machines, with sites in Reutlingen, Herzebrock-Clarholz, Hluk in the Czech Republic and Saverne in France. In 2021 it took over the Dutch partner Verbufa, renamed Handtmann Benelux in 2023. The division is now called Handtmann Processing, and it sells beyond meat: bakery, dairy, pet food and alternative proteins are all named on its sites. At iba 2025, vegconomist reported, it showed a multi-lane co-extrusion process for filled products.

Stainless, belts and trade fairs.

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.

“Ideas for the future.”

Handtmann is not only a food machinery brand, and that shapes how it presents itself. The group’s site divides it into five business areas: light-metal casting, systems engineering, plastics engineering, processing and process technology, each with its own management, under a holding company with an advisory board. Trade coverage of its 150th anniversary, in MSP Magazine in 2023, listed six divisions, counting e-solutions separately. German Wikipedia reports that the power electronics part of that unit was sold to ACD Antriebstechnik in 2025, with hydrogen electrolysis work staying in the group.

Casting remains central. The company dates permanent-mould casting to 1954 and die casting to 1961, the start of its contact with the German car industry. In 1992 it took over the Annaberg light-metal foundry in Saxony, which the company says DKW founded in 1926. Foundries followed in Košice in Slovakia, Tianjin in China and Kechnec in Slovakia. The brewery line changed metal: the company says its fittings works moved from brass to stainless steel in 1968, while German Wikipedia’s biography of Arthur Handtmann gives 1958. Plastics began in 1968 with Handtmann Elteka and the polyamide later sold as Lauramid. In 2024 Handtmann bought Kegelmann of Rodgau-Jügesheim, a plastics and additive manufacturing specialist. It left one field in 2017, selling its machining-centre business in a management buy-out, German Wikipedia says.

Family control is the constant. The company calls itself a family business, and MSP Magazine described it in 2023 as managed by the founding family for 150 years. Thomas Handtmann handed over at the anniversary, in a symbolic key ceremony, to his son Markus Handtmann and his nephew Valentin Ulrich, and became chairman of the advisory board. Both now hold the title of co-CEO.

On manufacturing, MSP Magazine gave the Filling and Portioning division’s production sites in 2023 as Biberach, Zittau, Reutlingen, Amersfoort in the Netherlands and Hluk in the Czech Republic, with a presence in more than 100 countries. Biberach remains the headquarters.

For a design guide, Handtmann shows how a family name can cover trades as different as sausage fillers and car-part castings, with the surname doing the work of the brand. Its tagline, “Ideas for the future,” is on its English site. Compare VEMAG, another German filler maker, and MULTIVAC, a packaging machinery maker from the Allgäu. For this guide we use a foundry brass and stainless grey with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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