Tönnies Holding

The Tönnies Group is a German family business in the meat industry founded in 1971, that operates internationally. The company with approximately 16,500 employees generated annual sales of EUR 6.65 billion in 2018 (7.5 billion in 2019).[1] Its core business is meat processing of pork and beef. For pork, Tönnies is the German market leader.[2] Tönnies is headquartered in Rheda-Wiedenbrück in East Westphalia, Germany. Tönnies is divided in eight business segments: Meat Pork & Beef, Convenience, Sausages, Ingredients, Logistics, International and Central Services. Tönnies pursues its internationalization strategy with 25 foreign offices, German and international production sites. The export share is about 50 percent.[3]

Main owner is billionaire Clemens Tönnies with a share of 45% of the food industry giant.[4] In 2019, Clemens Tönnies was temporarily suspended from his position as chairman of the supervisory board of the German soccer team FC Schalke 04 because of accusations of racist statements.[5]

The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) criticizes Tönnies for "miserable working conditions", with more than 70% of the employees at the main plant employed under temporary work contracts.[6][7]

On Wednesday, 17 June 2020, work was ramped-down at the Tönnies slaughterhouse in Rheda-Wiedenbrück due to an outbreak of COVID-19 infections originating from there. By that date, 657 employees had tested positive for the virus.[8] That afternoon the district of Gütersloh closed all schools and children's daycare centres until summer holiday. It also closed all post offices and cancelled training for FC Gütersloh 2000 as well as an upcoming Black Lives Matter demonstration.[9] By 20 June, the number of infections had exceeded 1,000.[10]